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UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 




THE WELDING OF A SEVERED MOUNTAIN CHAIN 



UNCLE SAM'S 
MODERN MIRACLES 

HIS GIGANTIC TASKS THAT 
BENEFIT HUMANITY 

BY 
WILLIAM ATHERTON DU PUY 



WITH FIFTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS 
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 




NEW YORK 
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



•He 



Copyright, 1914, by 
Frederick A. Stokes Company 



All rights reserved, including that of translation 
into foreign languages 



Q 




September, 1914 



SEP 22 1914 



CI.A379594 



TO 

THE PATRIOT OF VISION 

WHO HAS EYES TO SEE THE VAST 

HUMANITARIAN IDEA 

THAT LIES BENEATH THE OUTWARD MANIFESTATIONS 

OF THE GOVERNMENT'S GREAT WORKS 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 



CONTENTS 



I Conquering Contagion . 

II Awakening the Filipino . 

III Revealing Weather Secrets . 

IV Recompensing the Indian . 
V Transforming Western Deserts 

VI Shackling the Mississippi . . 

VII Helping the Farmer's Wife . 

VIII Rejuvenating Porto Rico . . 

IX Remaking the "Poor Whites" 

X Getting the Land to the People 

XI Smoothing a Nation's Roads . 

XII Combing the World for New Crops 

XIII Blanketing the World with Wireless 

XIV Daily Mail in the Country . . 
XV Producing Census Facts . . . 

XVI Accumulating Hoards of Gold . 

XVII Teaching Sanitation to the World 

XVIII Capturing Blackhanders . . . 

XIX Preparing for Possible Wars. . 

XX Assimilating the Immigrant Horde 



PAGE 
1 

15 

28 

42 

56 

70 

83 

105 

118 

128 

143 

155 

169 

177 

188 

202 

213 

232 

244 

256 



vii 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Welding of a Severed Mountain Chain . Frontispiece 



• 



FACING 
PAGE 



The Squad that Fought the Plague in Porto Rico . . 14* 

Proud Members of the Filipino Constabulary ... 15 * 

Levee Break, Forecast Two Weeks in Advance ... 34 

An Indian School in the Southeast 35 

Weaving the Tree Cloth 82*" 

Porto Rico Native Taking Pigs to Market .... 83 

General Land Office, Washington ....... 142 

The Wireless Map of the Navy Department .... 143 

A Very Rural Mail Route 186 

Uncle Sam's Fifteen Million Dollar Set of Books . .187 
Eight Millions in Gold in a Corner of Uncle Sam's Treas- 
ure House 212' 

Col. William Crawford Gorgas 213 

Guiseppe Morello, Chief of the Black Hand .... 242 

Dutch Boys 243 



IX 



INTRODUCTION 

The present is the age of huge accomplishments. 
Man individually and man in all sorts of groups is 
doing bigger things than ever before since Adam. 
The development of knowledge, of organization, of 
machinery, is making this possible. Actual accom- 
plishments of to-day outrival the most fantastic 
imaginings of a generation ago. 

Men the world around are taking part in the 
performance of these modern miracles, are showing 
themselves in tune with the spirit of the times. 
Even the European or the Oriental is ready, how- 
ever, to acknowledge that the American embodies 
that spirit more ideally than does the representative 
of any other nation. Young, virile, unbound by 
any precedent, he strikes out, undismayed, into the 
field of the hitherto unaccomplished. 

A nation but foreshadows the nature of the in- 
dividuals that go to make it up. So it comes to pass 
that the United States is the land of them all in this 
age of stupendous accomplishment that should be 
expected to undertake such tasks as would stagger 
any other agency of the present or the past. Were 
the United States a small nation made up of the 
same original and aggressive individuals that com- 
pose its citizenship, the possibility of vast national 

xi 



xii INTRODUCTION 

undertakings would be lessened. But instead of 
this it stands forth as the towering young giant 
among the countries of the world — vast in territory, 
strong in numbers, incomparable in wealth. 

Could a fitter agency for the performance of such 
tasks as would astound the Gods be selected? 

And the United States is rising to the occasion. 
Since time began there have been great works that 
have cried aloud to be done but which have been so 
large as to discourage any existing organization. 
Individuals and corporations have bound the oceans 
together with steel rails, have disemboweled the 
earth for its buried treasure, have built dizzying 
skyscrapers, have harnessed the tumbling waterfall. 
But none were great enough to cut two continents 
apart at Panama. 

The digging of the canal is a thing so definite and 
tangible that its magnificent proportions may be 
seen at a glance. The average man views it as the 
overtopping accomplishment of the age that stands 
superbly alone. Yet during the decade of its 
building the federal government has had under way 
a score of tasks as important and many of which 
may demand of the historian of the future as 
thoughtful attention. 

For the young Hercules among nations has gone 
forth and grappled successfully with the dragons 
of disease that have stalked devouringly about the 
world for ten thousand years. He has stretched 
forth his hand and lifted the pall of tyranny and 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

ignorance and disease and isolation from eight 
million people in the Orient. He has issued his 
commands to the titanic floods of the Mississippi 
and they have obeyed him. He has sought to bet- 
ter the condition of his most valuable asset, the 
mother on the farm, and much has been accom- 
plished. He has reclaimed deserts, conserved for- 
ests, blanketed the world with wireless. 

Back of most of these tasks there has stood one 
great principle — the well-being of humanity. Uncle 
Sam has labored that men and women might live 
better, cleaner, happier lives. Sometimes these 
people have been of his own family, sometimes yel- 
low men of the Far East, sometimes unappreciative 
Latins of the Caribbean. The effort has been as 
earnest and unselfish in the one case as in the 
other. 

The average American is a busy individual occu- 
pied with attaining success. The hustle of his 
calling, and the compromises he makes with himself 
in its outward manifestations, may not be good to 
look upon. But most men have their own secret 
charities and each is at heart a philanthropist. 

So does the federal government in the bickerings 
and the compromise of surface politics appear in its 
worst light, and come into disrepute with the casual 
observer. But that government is actually a great, 
onrushing stream that spreads itself out upon the 
desert lives of all its people and brings to them the 
flower of productivity and the possibility of a harvest 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

of happiness. Its gigantic undertakings are mani- 
festations of its innermost soul where it stands forth 
and reveals the granite of its real character. 

To him who has lost faith in his fellows, in society, 
in government, I would extend an invitation to 
come with me for an inspection of the really worth 
while undertakings to which the old man with the 
whiskers and the boots has set his hand. To him 
who is merely indifferent the same invitation is 
issued with a guarantee that he will know the joy 
of enthusiasm. For the government of the United 
States is to-day the greatest human force in exist- 
ence, is accomplishing the most stupendous, the 
most unselfish, the most epoch-making tasks per- 
formed since man began to take thought that he 
and his fellow might live better lives. The individ- 
ual whose citizenship gives him a claim to a part in 
those modern miracles and who still misses* the 
thrill of a just patriotic pride is robbing himself of 
a rare boon. 



UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 



UNCLE SAM'S 
MODERN MIRACLES 

CHAPTER I 

CONQUEKING CONTAGION 

IF plague breaks out to-day in Calcutta, or 
Amoy, or St. Petersburg, or at Punta Arenas 
on the Strait of Magellan, or at Basra on the 
Persian Gulf, or at Topeka, Kansas, or at any place 
else in the whole wide world, certain governmental 
authorities at Washington will know of it to-morrow 
and the organization of defense against it will be put 
in operation. If the contagion is beyond our own 
borders a barrier is immediately thrown up which 
makes it next to impossible for the disease to enter 
at any of the 17,000 miles of American coastline. 
If it is within and a serious menace, a cordon of 
health police is thrown around it and science is set 
to work on its extermination. If it is some strange 
malady outside the realm of established knowledge, 
the spotlight of science is flashed upon it and all 
that man knows is brought to the solution of its 
riddle. 

X 



2 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

The federal agency having in hand the gigantic 
undertaking of battling the disease of the world 
is the national Public Health Service. With the 
idea that health is a national asset this government 
bureau has been placed under the Treasury Depart- 
ment. The backbone of the service is its staff of 
about 140 surgeons who bear commissions, thus 
comprising a military organization which wears a 
uniform. Supplementing these is a staff of some 
250 acting assistant surgeons, various internes, 
pharmacists and hospital attendants which brings 
the direct employes of the bureau up to 1,500. 

This is the nucleus for Uncle Sam's fight against 
disease that might otherwise more seriously affect 
the well-being of his hundred million citizens. But 
this organization fits into a general scheme of things 
that brings to its aid the health authorities of all the 
states and of all the cities under the flag, which 
makes co-workers of the consuls of the nations 
scattered throughout the world which labors hand 
in hand with other far-seeing countries which know 
the necessity of a constantly improving condition of 
world health. 

From the world standpoint there are strategic 
points in the fight against disease. From the Far 
East there is always the danger of inroads of deadly 
bubonic plague or equally deadly cholera. Yoko- 
hama, Hong Kong, Amoy, Shanghai, and Calcutta 
are points" where these diseases may originate and 
from which they may be spread because the ships 



CONQUERING CONTAGION 3 

of the world call there. Naples is a lookout point 
for the Mediterranean. Libau, the Port of St. 
Petersburg, is the gateway for many emigrants; 
Guayaquil is a pest hole of South America; Havana 
is the watch tower of the Caribbean; Rio Janeiro 
the strategic point of the east coast of South 
America. 

At all these points and at twenty others the Public 
Health Service of the United States has highly 
trained health scouts regularly stationed. The 
duty of these commissioned surgeons is to watch 
with unceasing vigilance for contagion &nd keep the 
home office posted. Likewise are they ever ready 
to strike when occasion arises. So vigilant are they 
that they know immediately when there is a danger- 
ous outbreak of disease in their part of the world. 

Supplementary to these scouts of the Public 
Health Service are 'the United States consuls. 
Disease spreads through trade and a consul is sta- 
tioned in every trade center of importance from pole 
to pole. In all there are 500 cities in the world in 
which are stationed representatives of the consular 
service and these are the 500 most important com- 
mercial centers. 

Every consular officer is a health scout. While 
he may not be a medical officer as is the special 
representative of the Public Health Service it is 
none the less his duty to maintain an eternal vigi- 
lance for contagion than to watch trade conditions. 
Every week every one of these consular officers 



4 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

makes a written report to the Public Health Service. 
Every mail brings a stream of these reports to 
headquarters at Washington. Wherever there may- 
be an outbreak of any sort of disease that may be 
regarded as serious, the consul uses the cable and 
Washington knows immediately. 

Through state and municipal health agencies and 
from its own representatives the Public Health 
Service gets similar reports from every corner of the 
United States and its possessions. This completes 
the survey of the world. From each week's accu- 
mulation of health reports is compiled a sanitary 
chart of the world. This chart shows at a glance 
just what there is abroad in the way of disease the 
world around and just where it is. The chart is 
distributed to all the health and consular representa- 
tives that have contributed to its making that they, 
in return, may be kept thoroughly posted as to the 
general health condition and aware of what may be 
expected. Any man in all this great plan can tell 
you at a glance the exact health condition of all the 
world. If a ship comes to his port from any other 
port he looks at the chart and knows what disease 
he should look for on that ship. 

Consul Norton at Bombay, India, might discover 
the existence of plague at that port. He would 
immediately cable the health office at Washington. 
Washington would cable the Health Service repre- 
sentative in Calcutta, the surgeon nearest Bombay, 
and that official would immediately take charge of 



CONQUERING CONTAGION 5 

the situation with relation to the departure of ships 
that were to make American ports. Washington 
would at the same time cable Manila to guard 
against plague on all ships arriving from Bombay. 
The word would be passed throughout the archi- 
pelago, to Samoa, Honolulu, Guam. The Mediter- 
ranean outposts would become watchful of ships 
from the East. San Francisco would take precau- 
tions, New Orleans and New York would become 
watchful. Other progressive nations would pass the 
word and become equally vigilant. The one flash 
from Bombay would have tightened the health 
net of the world. 

Plague is borne by fleas that are borne by rats. 
The flea bites the plague victim, then bites the rat, 
which gets the plague. All the other fleas that bite 
the rat get the plague and give it to other rats and 
take it from them to human beings. The problem 
in keeping plague from spreading is to keep the rats 
from traveling. 

There being plague in Bombay the consular and 
health officers of the nations see to it that no vessel 
ties up to a wharf in such a way that a rat may get 
aboard. These officers allow no freight to go aboard 
that might carry rats unless it is known to have 
come direct from a non-infected district. The same 
regulation is applied to passengers and crew. The 
ship's papers, officially signed, state the facts with 
relation to all these things. The health authorities 
want to make commerce possible despite the exist- 



6 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

ence of contagious disease. So do they prove them- 
selves directly a boon to business. 

The vessel in the above case departs for the Philip- 
pines. From headquarters is issued a proclamation 
that all vessels from Bombay must report at Manila. 
If this vessel arrives at any other port it is not al- 
lowed to land but must go to Manila for rigid inspec- 
tion. It is there given a most thorough overhaul- 
ing. No lines are put out over which a rat might 
get to shore. A busy little tug may go alongside 
and its funnel gases may be caught with a hood 
and run into the hold of the ship and all life 
there exterminated, or the ship may be otherwise 
fumigated. 

For cholera there would be a different sort of 
vigilance necessary. This is a water-borne disease 
like typhoid. It develops in five days or not at all. 
When there is cholera in a port, passengers and crew 
of any ship leaving it are under observation for 
five days prior to its departure. If a given ship is 
under suspicion those desiring to land at a given 
port are detained five days. Smallpox is handled 
similarly. A suspicion of each form of contagion 
requires a different sort of vigilance but the au- 
thorities at every port know what to suspect on 
every ship that lands and all illnesses at port are 
looked upon with suspicion, for the results may be 
stupendously disastrous. 

Maintaining this quarantine is mighty strenuous 
work. Whenever any ship comes to an American 



CONQUERING CONTAGION 7 

port anywhere she must be rigidly inspected by a 
federal health officer. Always there are many 
people anxious to get ashore. Often every hour of 
delay will mean hundreds of dollars of loss to a large 
ship. The health authorities want to cause the 
least possible inconvenience. So the Public Health 
boat tries to meet all ships in all weathers on all seas 
with the least possible delay. The young surgeon 
aboard his launch trying to catch the ladder of a 
great steamer, with the waves running house-top 
high, has no easy task. But they do it day after day 
at a hundred ports. 

But despite these precautions contagious diseases 
sometimes get in. Smallpox occasionally gets across 
the Mexican line. Yellow fever crowds up from 
Latin America. Plague has given the authorities 
a tussle at San Francisco and in Porto Rico within 
the last few years. Trachoma is present among the 
American Indians. Typhoid may be abroad over 
a great area. These give opportunity for many a 
merry struggle between the health officers and the 
monster of death. 

The authorities of every town and city and state 
report the presence of disease that may be of more 
than local interest. So is the national Public 
Health Service advised when an outbreak may affect 
interstate health. So, also, may the federal au- 
thorities be called in when the state needs aid in 
handling some particularly difficult situation. 

Trachoma, against which there is such vigilance at 



8 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

the ports where immigrants are admitted, is running 
riot among the mountaineers of Kentucky. Those 
men of the hills whom the outside world has known 
chiefly through their feuds, are going blind because 
of the immigrant disease that has got into their eyes. 
There are six counties with 100,000 people among 
whom one in five has trachoma. Blindness is 
bearing in upon these pure-blood Americans lost in 
an eddy of the nation's stream of progress. 

The State of Kentucky became aware of this con- 
dition. It felt unequal to so great a task as its 
eradication and called upon the nation for help. 
Men of the Public Health Service have gone into 
the mountains and have established four hospitals. 
Throughout the mountains they have sent their 
representatives and the blind are being gathered 
together and those on the way toward blindness are 
being cured. The disease is being steadily crowded 
out and many men of to-morrow who might have 
been blind will see. 

The recent outbreak of bubonic plague in Porto 
Rico was a good example of the effective work that 
may be done in stamping out a disease that might 
mean the death of a nation. There were thirty 
cases of it in Porto Rico when the Public Health 
Service took hold of the situation. This meant that 
the worst of plagues was well established. 

The Service always has available a flying squad 
of surgeons that it may fling against any point of 
disease attack. Five of these young health cru- 



CONQUERING CONTAGION 9 

saders were hurried to San Juan. No sooner had 
they landed than the attack was begun. The first 
move was the organization of squads for the trapping 
of rats. Great numbers of the vermin were caught 
in all parts of the city. The point of capture of 
each rat was carefully recorded. Each was ex- 
amined for plague-infection. If this was found 
the disease was known to exist in the part of the 
city from which it came. So was the extent of the 
disease soon established. 

Then was the battle begun to narrow that area. 
Squads of men would then begin a cleaning up that 
was so effectual that no rat could find a hiding- 
place within it. Basements were cemented and 
rat-proofed and fumigated. All rubbish was re- 
moved, every burrow destroyed. Block by block 
was the area of plague-free territory increased. The 
affected section grew steadily smaller. Rats were 
constantly caught throughout the city as proof of 
its healthy condition. Such a cleaning up was 
administered to San Juan as has seldom been visited 
on any city except Havana and San Francisco and 
Manila and some others upon which Uncle Sam has 
visited especial attention. It could have been ac- 
complished only through that efficiency and thor- 
oughness that modern men of action and science are 
bringing to bear on such problems. The result was 
not merely the eradication of the disease but the 
creation of a Spotless Town in Porto Rico. 



10 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

Typhoid fever, which is transmitted through 
water or milk, often grows prevalent in a given city 
or a given watershed. In some cases it is a great 
piece of detective work to determine the source 
of this fever. Often it is beyond the local authori- 
ties and the federal Health Service is called in. A 
careful study is made of all past cases. Particularly 
is inquiry made into the source of the milk and the 
water that has been used by those who have been 
sick. If they are mostly children suspicion is thrown 
on the milk, for children are the milk drinkers. 
If there are a majority of grown-ups the water is 
under suspicion. If the milk drunk by a large per- 
centage of the children affected is from a certain 
dairy, that institution is placed under suspicion and 
investigated. If the water drunk by the grown-ups 
affected is from a certain well or stream, that supply 
is given an overhauling. Eventually these men of 
science trace the dread germ to its source and the 
cause of the epidemic is removed. 

The young Davids of the Public Health Service 
are constantly going forth to battle with new and 
unknown Goliaths. Almost every year some of 
them give up their lives in this dangerous work, the 
chronicles of which read like fiction. 

The scientific world, for instance, is just now 
coming to understand typhus fever. This is the 
ancient disease which caused many plagues in 
Biblical times. It has been known as jail fever and 
camp fever during many a war. Until recently it 



CONQUERING CONTAGION 11 

was not believed to exist in the United States. 
Some years ago, however, it broke out in the city 
of Mexico. Three expeditions went there to study 
it. One was from the University of Chicago, one 
from the University of Ohio, and one from the 
Hygienic Laboratory of the Public Health Service. 
There were two men in each expedition. In each 
expedition one man came down with the fever. Of 
the Chicago party Dr. Rickets died. Of the Uni- 
versity of Ohio expedition, Dr. Coneff died. Of 
the Hygienic Laboratory expedition, Dr. Joseph 
Goldberger came down with the disease but eventu- 
ally recovered. This case may be cited as typical 
of the dangers attached to this sort of work. Dr. 
Goldberger has contracted in the line of his work, 
besides typhus, yellow fever, dengue, and typhoid, 
the dangers of death from each of which is greater 
than from a bullet through the chest. 

About the time that Dr. Goldberger returned 
from Mexico, Dr. Brill, of New York, issued a 
treatise on a fever which has since come to be known 
as Brill's disease. The government surgeons studied 
this report and noted striking resemblances between 
Brill's disease and the typhus they had been study- 
ing. They had proved that a monkey infected with 
typhus fever but which had recovered from it could 
not be again infected. They infected certain mon- 
keys with Brill's disease. These monkeys, after 
recovering, were taken to Mexico and exposed to 
the typhus fever. They did not become infected. 



12 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

Other monkeys that had not been infected with 
Brill's disease readily took typhus. So was it 
established that Brill's disease and typhus fever 
were the same thing. Incidentally the fact was 
established that both were transmitted in the same 
way by insects, and that both were present in most 
American cities. 

This is typical of the original work of the Pub- 
lic Health Service. The Hygienic Laboratory is 
the highly skilled institution that carries on such 
work. 

To the Laboratory were brought a large collection 
of ticks from Bitter Root Valley, Montana. These 
ticks were well loaded with spotted fever, a com- 
plaint peculiar to the Rocky Mountains. Spotted 
fever is plentiful among the ground squirrels of the 
Rockies. Ticks bite the ground squirrels and inci- 
dentally one occasionally bites a man. The man in 
nine cases of ten dies. Past Assistant Surgeon 
Thomas B. McClintic went to Montana to study 
spotted fever. He wanted to find a method of 
eradicating it. In the course of his work Dr. 
McClintic was bitten by one of these ticks, came 
down with the disease, and died en route to 
Washington. 

In the meantime, however, he had acquired a 
great deal of material from which to study the dis- 
ease and a nucleus of it had been planted to grow at 
the Laboratory. The disease was transmitted to 
guinea-pigs that it might be watched in running 



CONQUERING CONTAGION 13 

its course in these small animals. Eventually 
the secrets of the disease were found out, and there- 
by the lives of a dozen sturdy citizens of Bitter Root 
Valley each year will be spared. 

Ground squirrels have plague in California, and a 
long fight has been waged for the extermination of 
those affected. An example of the risks run by 
these battlers with disease is shown by these ground 
squirrel exterminators. After killing the squirrels 
from a given burrow, these men want to know if 
plague is harbored there. To determine this, fleas 
from the burrow must be captured. A member 
of the health squad thrusts his arm into the hole 
where the suspected squirrels have lived. The 
hungry fleas pounce upon it and are captured. 
The owner of the arm runs the chance of getting 
plague. 

Altogether this health fight is a very large task 
and one that is being creditably performed. So 
signally has Uncle Sam succeeded in Havana and 
Panama and Manila that he is being called upon to 
assist in driving disease from many foreign cities. 
There is, for instance, the case of Iquitos, Peru, the 
rubber camp far up the Amazon. Iquitos borrowed 
a surgeon from the United States who freed it of 
yellow fever in six months, a condition previously 
unknown. 

The risk of death encountered by these soldiers in 
the war against disease is always willingly assumed. 
The crusader feels that his risk may result, in the 



14 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

cycle of a century, in the saving of a million lives 
and that such a privilege rarely comes to a man. 
Such a discovery as the transmission of yellow fever 
by the mosquito is surely of this importance. 

Uncle Sam's Public Health Service is establishing 
health standards for the world. The disease and 
suffering and death that it is preventing is beyond 
estimate. Assuredly it contributes materially to 
the happiness of the world, and gives the American 
additional cause for pride in his citizenship. 



CHAPTER II 

AWAKENING THE FILIPINO 

UNCLE Sam in the Philippines is performing 
one of the very biggest tasks in the world 
to-day, and one large with world influ- 
ences. Upon those 2,000 islands of the South Seas 
is being planted and nurtured the governmental 
ideas of the brand-new West. Eight million 
Malays, members of a race whose civilization was 
old before the Anglo-Saxon came into existence, are 
being hustled into becoming self-governing republic- 
ans, a thing never dreamed of on their side of the 
world until this task was begun. In the virgin field 
here offered are being planted elements of govern- 
ment so recently demonstrated that they have not 
yet been established in the States. If this govern- 
mental experiment proves a success its influence may 
easily make over the map of the Far East. 

Into this eddy of the world where matters have 
changed but little while the West has raced through 
centuries of headlong development, 8,000,000 yellow 
people are being trained to speak and read and write 
English, the language of steamships, electricity, and 
the aeroplane. Eight millions of these people are 
being given the tools of the modern and the training 

15 



16 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

that makes for efficient use of these tools. The mar- 
kets of the world are being opened to them, the lore 
of the world, the field of world opportunity. They 
are being awakened and brought into a realization of 
their heirship to all the ages. They of all their kind 
are the first to try out the civilization of their fellows 
on the other side of the world. 

But if these men become 8,000,000 demonstra- 
tions of orientals made potent by the touch of the 
West, may not the whole East become awakened? 

Uncle Sam is governing these people of the Phil- 
ippines as no conquered people has ever been 
governed before since the world began. He has, 
in his administration of their affairs, one central 
idea — the improvement of the condition of the 
native. All other nations in all times have exploited 
conquered peoples for the profit of the conquerors. 
The conquerors have planned to keep their subjects 
well under control, to keep them poor, weak, igno- 
rant, that this might be the easier. The United 
States has sought to develop its subject race into 
strength, wisdom, prosperity, that it might ulti- 
mately be given independence. Thus are the 
Philippines being made an object lesson in colonial 
government to all the nations of the world. Thus is 
the United States demonstrating the great, humani- 
tarian sentiment that underlies its government and 
which constantly lifts it above mere commercialism. 

It has been half a generation since the United 
States came into possession of these far eastern 



AWAKENING THE FILIPINO 17 

islands. Their area is about that of the six New 
England states plus New York and New Jersey. 
It is 2,400 miles from their northernmost point 
to the southernmost and they reach almost to the 
equator. There are as many people living in them 
as there are in New York and Chicago and Washing- 
ton and San Francisco combined. In the Rocky 
Mountain states and the Pacific Coast states taken 
together there are fewer people than in the Philip- 
pines. So may it be seen that it was no small 
guardianship that was placed on this nation. 

In these islands there were some sixty different 
tribes speaking different dialects. They were all 
nominally under the rule of Spain and had been 
since days before the United States came into being. 
Yet they were barely touched by the Spanish 
influence and but a handful of them spoke the lan- 
guage. The lack of a common language made 
commerce difficult between the tribes and usually 
there was war. The population huddled together 
in villages that were without sanitation, and disease 
stalked abroad in the land. Pestilence, plague, 
consumption, ran riot and received no treatment. 
Communication between the islands was most diffi- 
cult. The rule of the Spaniard had been high- 
handed and cruel. The people were without spirit 
and without hope. 

In place of these conditions there is to-day, a 
system of schools on the American plan that has 
already carried the rudiments of an education to 



18 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

2,000,000 young Filipinos. There is peace through- 
out the entire region, with ample provision for its 
maintenance. There is communication by regularly 
scheduled boats with all the important islands. 
Sanitary science has found its way throughout the 
islands, railroads are pushing out in half a dozen 
directions, industries are developing, the native is 
learning how to work and is finding that by his 
labor he can provide himself with a competence. 

One of the first big ideas that Americans in the 
Philippines began to work out was that of the public 
school. Education was the surest road to advance- 
ment. They saw that the islands could not be 
developed into a homogeneous nation unless the 
people were given a common language which would 
make intercourse and therefore commerce possi- 
ble between them. They consequently inaugu- 
rated the system of schools under which they had 
grown up and, wherever they could induce a dozen 
children of the wild to come together, there was 
set up a classroom with a teacher in charge to point 
the way to reading and writing and a smattering 
of figures. 

So there have come to be 4,000 public schools 
in the islands. These are attended by 600,000 
pupils who receive instruction from 700 American 
teachers and 8,000 Filipino teachers, these latter 
being placed in charge of schools as fast as they 
prove their efficiency. Since the American schools 
were opened in the islands, 2,000,000 different 



AWAKENING THE FILIPINO 19 

youngsters have been enrolled and all of these have 
gained a considerable understanding of English 
and American living. At this rate it is estimated 
that the common language scheme will be an actual 
accomplishment in a few decades. 

By the time the basis of a school system had 
been laid down in the Philippines, the Americans 
had come to an appreciation of the fact that the 
education of these people should be toward manual 
productiveness. The schools should teach them 
to work. The idea of the industrial school was just 
coming into popularity in the States but was being 
introduced slowly there because they had an estab- 
lished organization to displace. 

In the Philippines there was nothing to displace. 
The industrial school was the first school. There 
is no other community in the world to-day where 
the industrial idea is so generally predominant in 
the schools as in those of the Philippines. Ninety- 
five per cent, of the pupils are in industrial courses. 
Every city and town school has its manual training 
department. The remotest mountain district has 
its school garden. These wild boys of the hills 
are competing in corn clubs as are the youths of 
Iowa. Special attention is paid to training in the 
native industries, such as hat making, lace making, 
basket making. The progressive Americans who 
are responsible for schools and for many other 
institutions in the Philippines claim that they 
have set a mark for all the world. 



20 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

The practical turn of these schools may be 
judged by the recent establishment of a School of 
Household Industries for which 100,000 pesos was 
appropriated. This is a school for women. The 
first year 150 bright women were gathered up from 
as many districts and taught for six months in this 
school. Then they were returned to their homes 
where they were encouraged to form classes and 
demonstrate the home industries they had learned. 
Another assignment of women took their place and 
the process is continued with the idea of eventually 
having women in every district who know many of 
the secrets here taught. Could anything be more 
practical? 

The climax of American encouragement of edu- 
cation in the islands has been, however, the de- 
velopment of the University of the Philippines. 
Beginning with a college of agriculture which 
studied and taught farming particularly adapted 
to the region, and with a medical college which 
specialized likewise in the disease of the region, this 
university is gathering about it such varieties of 
work as to call to it the attention of all the Far East. 
There are each year 2,000 men studying at Manila 
in this great school, and applications are coming 
from China and Japan and many other points for 
the privilege of entering students. It promises to 
become one of the great seats of learning of its 
part of the world. 

Many Americans have the false impression that 



AWAKENING THE FILIPINO 21 

all this is paid for by the United States. As a 
matter of fact there is but one expense in the islands 
that is borne by the United States, and that is 
the maintenance of the army which, viewed in one 
light, would need to be maintained anyway. The 
local government raises all the money for schools, 
sanitation, road building, carrying on the govern- 
ment, and all else. 

The Philippine Constabulary, for instance, is 
the potent influence in the islands for the main- 
tenance of law and order, and is paid for by the In- 
sular government. The army is largely centered 
in a few posts and is not called upon except in case 
of major disturbances. But the Constabulary 
is scattered abroad in the land. It is to the Philip- 
pines what the Mounted Police is to Canada or the 
Rangers were to Texas in earlier days. 

There are 5,000 men in the Constabulary. Most 
of the commissioned officers are army men from 
America. Many of them were "non corns" and 
went into the Constabulary when their terms of 
enlistment expired in the regular army. All the 
men in the ranks are natives, as are most of the 
non-commissioned officers and some few men in 
higher grade. 

Every youngster in the islands wants to enlist 
in the Constabulary. The salary of $7.50 a month 
means affluence to a Filipino, and the possession of 
a khaki uniform is a glory that could never have been 
dreamed of before the Americans came. So the 



22 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

youngsters come in out of the bush and, if they are 
strong and intelligent and willing, they may be 
enlisted, become affluent and learn to be a soldier 
while learning the ways of the white man and his 
language, for each post has its school for members of 
the Constabulary. 

Six months of discipline performs the miracle of 
transformation and these youngsters are stationed 
in small groups under sergeants in every village. 
Here they maintain vigilance for whatever dis-. 
affection may develop, strike quickly when necessity 
requires, and call for help if the task is overlarge. 
Incidentally they keep an eye on the locally elected 
officials and report when there is a suspicion of 
anything like graft. 

Members of the Constabulary are moved about 
with sufficient frequency to prevent the develop- 
ment of understandings with local officials. They 
all report to a central authority and this gives the 
government the equivalent of a corps of special 
agents to watch the entire island for misconduct on 
the part of its local politicians. It therefore be- 
comes difficult for the petty politician to operate as 
he may, even in the States. 

This check on local officials has enabled the central 
government to go much farther than it otherwise 
would and place these offices absolutely at the dis- 
posal of the natives. The legislature is elective 
but the upper house is made up of commissioners 
appointed from Washington, and so is legislation 



AWAKENING THE FILIPINO 23 

checked when not approved by the United States. 
The governor is likewise appointed from Washing- 
ton; and that post, incidentally, is the best paid posi- 
tion in the government of the United States next to 
that of the President himself, the salary being 
$20,000 a year. The entire Insular government is 
under the direction of the War Department 
through the Bureau of Insular Affairs. 

After the American occupation began the death 
rate in Manila was something appalling, for here 
was a city of more than 200,000 people with no 
sanitation and practically no steps taken to prevent 
disease. It required some years for the develop- 
ment of a sewer system and a water supply but these 
were the first endeavors of the Americans. The 
death rate among babies under a year of age was at 
first around the appalling figure of 60 per cent. 
This has been cut in two since a water supply was 
secured. The records of deaths from dysentery 
and kindred diseases in the first years of the occu- 
pation averaged 3,558. In 1912 deaths from these 
causes amounted to 1,195, less than a third of the 
former number. 

Among the villages of the interior, conditions were 
as bad. The trouble was generally a contaminated 
water supply. The Department of the Interior 
of the islands undertook the sinking of artesian wells. 
Already 700 of these have been sunk in almost as 
many villages. In some places the mere furnishing 
of this pure water resulted in a decrease of one-half 



24 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

in the death rate. It is estimated that through this 
sort of sanitation, Uncle Sam is every year saving 
10,000 baby lives. 

In Manila is the Philippine General Hospital, an 
institution that is most modern and efficient in every 
respect. It would be difficult to find a better 
hospital anywhere in the world or a more fertile 
field in which it might operate. One of the impor- 
tant pieces of work that it is doing is the schooling 
of the greatest possible number of native women as 
trained nurses. There are fields of unlimited use- 
fulness for these women in all parts of the islands. 
Dispensaries have been established in five of the 
provinces. 

In all directions little hospitals are being opened 
and medical and surgical attention is being ex- 
tended to these people who have never before 
known of such care. Such a hospital was recently 
opened at Bontoc, far up in the mountains, and it 
has been filled to capacity ever since. Every 
station is a center from which sanitation is taught. 
Every government agency, such as the school and 
the Constabulary, is made a force that teaches 
sanitation and leads to health. So thorough is the 
work that all these millions have already responded 
and, instead of being one of the pest holes of the 
world, the islands are becoming as healthy as is 
Panama or Peoria, Illinois. 

An example of one of the remarkable demon- 
strations to up-to-the-minute government, is to be 



AWAKENING THE FILIPINO 25 

found in the prison system of the Philippines. There 
has been established at Iwahig, on the island of 
Palawan, a penal colony. On three sides the moun- 
tains rise precipitously and on the fourth is the sea. 
It is a region from which escape would be practically 
impossible. So it is unnecessary to maintain 
prison bars or guards or any of the ordinary re- 
straints that are thrown about men and women who 
are paying the penalties for their crimes. Instead 
of these is substituted an ideal farm demonstration 
plant and an organization for the teaching of other 
insular industries. 

To this penal colony are assigned prisoners of good 
behavior from all the institutions of the islands. 
There are about a thousand men and women held 
here. They govern themselves as do the boys of 
the George Junior Republic of New York. Every 
individual is put into the sort of work for which he 
shows an aptness. He is taught a trade and 
allowed to share in the profits of his work. He may 
take a plot of land and farm i,t on the shares, under 
skilled direction. If his deportment is good he 
may eventually bring his family to reside with him. 
When his prison term has expired he may retain the 
plot of land as a permanent home if he so desires. 
Every influence is brought to bear upon him to 
make him a self-respecting and productive citizen. 
Iwahig throws down the gauntlet in all the prison 
institutions of the world. 

The Insular Department of Agriculture is pro- 



26 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

ducing a series of demonstrations of possible profits 
that may be received from native crops. It has 
shown the Filipino farmer how he may grow enough 
rice for the support of his family even without a 
caraboa, that native plow animal which was 
recently killed in such large numbers by disease. 
It has convinced the world that great regions in the 
Philippines are as excellent sugar lands as are the 
plantations of Hawaii. Sugar centrals are being 
established in different parts of the islands to mill 
the cane of the individual growers. Great sugar 
plantations are being established on what were once 
the friar lands, and to-day such scenes may be 
observed as a huge traction-engine stationed on 
each side of a great field dragging back and forth 
by cable plows that throw twenty furrows at each 
trip across the land. The Philippines, these ex- 
perts hold, are soon to outstrip Hawaii or Cuba or 
Porto Pico in the production of this great staple. 

The American government is performing this 
work of uplift with little assurance of the result that 
will be accomplished. The Filipinos nor no kindred 
race has ever been given this sort of opportunity 
and therefore the manner in which they will respond 
is entirely unknown. The Filipino individually 
and collectively has shown himself to be wonder- 
fully apt to learn. In any kind of skilled work 
with the hands he has but to be shown his task once 
or twice and he has mastered it. He learns a 
language much more quickly than does an American 



AWAKENING THE FILIPINO 27 

and in the ordinary studies of a school course the 
children are as quick as are those of the most 
progressive races. 

Yet in the two centuries during which the 
Filipino has been in touch with European peoples 
and during which time certain members of the 
race have had opportunities for education and 
travel, no single great man has been developed. A 
few individuals of the race who have shown any 
degree of greatness have been mixed with Chinese 
or European blood. It is said of the full-blood 
Filipino that he is a skilled automaton, capable of 
learning any lesson that is set for him by another, 
but entirely without originality or initiative. 

The representatives of the United States are not 
yet convinced that this is a fact. If such proves 
to be the case they hold that the Filipinos, located 
in one of the richest lands in the world, may still 
be made a most useful, productive, peaceful, and 
happy people. If the aroused Malay strikes afield 
for himself when supplied with the necessary in- 
formation, he will be given an opportunity to 
develop for himself a nation in these South Seas 
and there is no gainsaying the lines of growth that 
may be followed by such a nation of such blood, for 
the experiment has never been tried since in the 
history of the world. 



CHAPTER III 

REVEALING WEATHER SECRETS 

AT eight o'clock each morning the telegraph 
companies of the nation and of the world 
throw their circuits into the office of the 
United States weather forecaster at Washington. 
From that moment and for two hours thereafter 
this individual is in direct communication with 
nearly 300 observers. He is looped into Dutch 
Harbor where the Aleutian Islands reach out toward 
Japan. Manila is reporting. Panama is talking 
in code of the weather. Liverpool is telling of the 
state of the barometer in the neighborhood of the 
British Isles. Vardo, Astrakan, Nertschinsk, loop 
in by way of Russia and pick off the dispatches that 
are coming from Shanghai. 

Every station in continental United States gets 
on the wire, sends in its report and listens to the 
weather news of its region as reported by all the 
other men on its circuit. Fifty ships at sea, under 
special contract, flash out their wireless reports of 
the weather conditions which are picked up by the 
great stations at Arlington and at Key West. A 
few hours later these same stations hammer back 
to sea a weather report of all the north Atlantic 

28 



REVEALING WEATHER SECRETS 29 

ocean and every ship this side of Gibraltar may pick 
up the news. The forecaster draws his ninety- 
percent-correct conclusions from this mass of detail, 
makes his forecasts, his telegraphers begin sending 
instead of receiving messages, the infinite machinery 
for disseminating those messages is put to work, 
and the ninety millions know what are the weath- 
er probabilities for the day to come. 

All of which operation has required the space of 
but two short hours. 

This is the obvious purpose of the Weather 
Bureau. The public sees the results of these fore- 
casts and occasionally gets a peep at the method of 
their making up. But the world-encompassing 
machinery necessary in accomplishing these results 
is seldom appreciated. Neither does the public 
know much of those other phases of Weather Bureau 
work that are less seen but none the less marvelous. 

The present greatness of accomplishment of this 
service is one of the wonder stories of the govern- 
ment. The service that it performs applies so 
infinitely that the business of the nation would be 
upset if it suspended operations for three days. 
The money that it saves to the nation is almost 
beyond estimate; aside from which it is among the 
greatest life saving agencies in the world to-day. 

It was the day before Thanksgiving some years 
back that the old side-wheel steamer, Portland, lay 
in the harbor of Boston ready to clear for her home 
port in Maine. Her sister ship at the same time 



30 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

lay in the Portland harbor ready to clear for 
Boston. There was the tang of a New England 
autumn in the air but the day was clear and weather 
conditions ideal. The decks were full of people, all 
hurrying home for Thanksgiving dinner, an event 
dear to the hearts of these descendants of the 
Pilgrims. 

At this moment came the flash of warning from 
the Weather Bureau at Washington to the effect that 
a storm was coming up from the Caribbean and 
should be expected to reach this part of the world 
in twelve hours. These warnings were disregarded 
by the captain of the Portland and he put to sea as 
though they had never been received. The captain 
of the sister ship in the Maine port, upon receipt 
of the same warning, refused to leave the wharf and 
turned a deaf ear to the entreaties of his passengers 
who were thus to lose the chance of Thanksgiving 
at home. 

At midnight the storm broke. The next day 
came the news of the loss of the Portland and 150 
lives, no person on board surviving. So was a most 
dramatic example given of the results of observing 
and disregarding Weather Bureau warnings. So 
was graphically, if tragically, shown the Weather 
Bureau's methods of saving life. 

For thirty years the Weather Bureau has been 
extending these warnings of approaching storms. 
Generally they are strictly regarded by small boats 
to whom such storms are dangerous. The big 



REVEALING WEATHER SECRETS 31 

i 

liners are aware of what to expect and are often 
able to so direct their courses as to avoid the storms. 

Storms that affect the Atlantic seaboard may be 
forecast with almost mathematical accuracy. There 
are several sources of storms that may here prove 
dangerous. One is from Alaska, mother of storms, 
from which point they travel by way of Medicine 
Hat, the Dakotas, Cincinnati and points east. 
There is a week between the time the existence of 
such a storm may be known and its arrival in the 
Atlantic. There are observing stations all along 
the route reporting twice a day to Washington. 

Another point of origin for such storms is the 
Caribbean, off the north coast of South America. 
Here the United States government sends its in- 
struments for observation and employs men at the 
various cable stations to make readings and report 
daily during the hurricane season. In these waters 
ply also those ships which are in the employ of the 
Weather Bureau and which report all disturbances 
in their paths, the wireless messages being passed 
from one to another when the shore is out of reach. 
The coast stations that are found wherever Uncle 
Sam has a foothold, supplement these points of 
report. 

So may a disturbance be traced for a week as it 
advances from the coast of Venezuela toward 
Galveston and is usually deflected around the point 
at Florida and on through the Atlantic. There is 
ample time for the warning of all mariners of the 



32 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

approach of any of these storms and the number of 
good seamen afloat to-day who would otherwise be 
now in Davy Jones 7 locker is surely legion. 

But recently the final step was made that spread 
the blanket of the government's storm warning over 
the entire North Atlantic. The great wireless 
stations at Arlington and Key West were impressed 
into the scheme and now reach out to sea twice a 
day to a distance of 2,000 miles and carry to all 
ships that are able to receive their dispatches the 
news of the storms that are brewing and likely to 
cause trouble. 

The Weather Bureau keeps its finger on the pulse 
of every river in the nation. There is not a stream 
of importance in the country that can go on a 
rampage without Uncle Sam finding it out early in 
the game and tipping the facts off to those who dwell 
lower down, giving them from half a day to two 
weeks to make preparations. 

If there is two inches of rainfall in the drainage 
basin of the Schuylkill River, the Weather 
Bureau immediately knows of it. It has the tables 
ready to show what effect that rainfall will have 
on the river flow and how high the stream will be at 
Harrisburg. It tells the Harrisburgers all about 
it. 

When the great floods come in Indiana and Ohio, 
the Weather Bureau knows pretty well what is going 
to happen. It knows just how much snow there is 
in those states to be melted by the rains. The 



REVEALING WEATHER SECRETS 33 

measurement of snows is a part of its work. It 
knows what is the rainfall and adds just as much to 
the water to be carried by the streams. It has been 
reading gages on those streams for many years 
and knows to just what extent they will be able to 
carry those waters. 

So they immediately begin sounding the alarm at 
all points downstream. The result is a degree of 
preparedness. 

Low down on the Mississippi those men who 
attempt to hold the levees against the floods, are 
told two weeks in advance of the high waters that 
they should expect. At certain points these figures 
may show that the levees will be inadequate. 
Strenuous efforts may be made at reinforcement and 
often these save great areas, laden with rich crops, 
from inundation. Again there may not be suf- 
ficient time and labor available and the levees break 
when the big waters come. 

But to revert to the herculean task of gathering 
the weather reports of the nation every morning, 
basing forecasts upon the facts as shown, and dis- 
tributing this information to the whole people. 

There are 200 principal stations in the United 
States. Reports from these 200 would pick up any 
weather disturbance in the country that was of 
importance. These stations all hitch up by wire 
with Washington at eight o'clock each morning. 
This is done by prearrangement with the telegraph 
companies with whom Uncle Sam spends $275,000 a 



34 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

year for the service. All the stations in a given 
region get on a certain circuit. It takes but ten 
circuits to cover the entire country. 

One circuit, for instance, would cover the South. 
Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta, Richmond, and a 
score of others would be on that circuit. Houston 
begins reporting at eight o'clock. All the other 
stations on the circuit hear what Houston reports. 
New Orleans then begins. Every station on the 
loop listens to New Orleans; and so on until they 
have all reported. In sending to Washington, each 
of these stations has also reported to every other in 
its district and each has all the weather news of its 
section. Washington will not have to wire this 
detail back. The same is true of each and all of the 
circuits. Each station has the detail of the weather 
in its region as soon as Washington has it. 

In the central office at Washington an expert 
sits over a map on which he instantly records every 
detail of the report as received in a graphic way 
which carries to the man accustomed to reading a 
weather map the whole story of the weather situ- 
ation throughout the country. From the conditions 
as they exist to-day, as compared with those as 
shown by the map of yesterday and of the day be- 
fore, the forecaster can tell just what is happening 
and can forecast, with a reasonable degree of 
accuracy, what will happen to-morrow. 

There are two principal clues to the weather, these 
being the low and the high barometer or air pressure. 



REVEALING WEATHER SECRETS 35 

The low barometer means warm weather with rain 
or snow and winds. It is the sign of the storm. 
The high reading of the barometer signifies cool and 
clear weather. When the air pressure is low there 
are partial vacuums created which causes the rush- 
ing in and up of the air and therefore winds and rain. 
The low barometer, sign of the storm, nearly always 
appears first in Alaska and the Canadian northwest 
and it is from this quarter that practically all of 
the important weather changes come except the 
typhoons from the South. 

The observer sees on to-day's map a "low" for 
Toledo. On yesterday's map this low appeared 
at Chicago, the day before at Winnepeg, and the 
day before at Edmonton. It is easy to observe the 
advance of the storm. It will reach Buffalo in 
twelve hours and New York in twenty-four. This 
is almost a certainty but there is always the possi- 
bility of its being deflected by some cross current 
or of its wearing itself out. Behind the low barometer 
and the storm always comes the high barometer 
and the cool, clear weather. The maps always 
show a procession of these chasing each other across 
the country. 

It is from the showing of the map of to-day's 
weather conditions as revealed from the stations 
reporting, as compared with the maps of the days 
immediately past, that the forecaster determines 
what is going to happen in the given localities. He 
reads off the forecasts for a hundred different dis- 



36 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

tricts as readily as the broker reads the quotations 
from his ticker. 

Then comes the no less monstrous task of getting 
this forecast to the whole people as quickly as pos- 
sible that they may make the greatest amount of 
use of it. The central office at Washington at- 
tempts to let the ninety millions know what the 
weather is to be for twenty-four to forty-eight hours 
in advance. 

It is aided in this by the fact that weather is 
news. People are more prone to talk of weather 
than anything else. More people read the weather 
forecast than anything else in a newspaper. There- 
fore the great press associations are anxious to get 
the forecasts. They convey it to their subscribers 
from one end of the nation to the other and these 
rush it into print in their newspapers. The 
Weather Bureau is thus aided in performing its 
purpose. Thus is the mass of the people, partic- 
ularly the city dwellers, reached with a fair degree 
of promptness. 

But the Weather Bureau does not depend wholly 
on this indirect method of getting its weather reports 
to the people. Nor does Washington attempt to 
handle the entire job. It calls for help that the fore- 
casts may get back more quickly. It covers the east- 
ern half of the nation. Chicago forecasts for eleven 
states in the northwest, New Orleans for a southern 
group, Denver for the central mountain plateau and 
San Francisco and Portland for the Pacific coast. 
When the reports have come into these six citi«s 



REVEALING WEATHER SECRETS 37 

and the maps have been made and the forecasts for 
the different regions recorded, the machinery that 
has brought in the information is reversed and the 
forecasts are sent out over the different circuits. 
So does each station get its forecast direct and each 
has its own way of making use of it. 

Every station has forecast cards that it stamps 
with the weather message of the day and distributes 
to individuals and institutions asking for it. These 
go out to all postmasters in the district. Many 
postmasters have their own methods of duplication. 
They are provided by the Weather Bureau with 
rubber stamp outfits from which they can make up 
the given message and duplicate it on any given 
number of cards. These cards are sent out by 
rural letter carriers and posted in conspicuous 
places. 

There is hardly an individual farmer to be found 
in the United States who can not have this weather 
card every day for the asking. Through this post- 
master and the Weather Bureau he may have it 
delivered each day, probably within four hours of 
the forecast and yet good for a day and a half of 
the future. 

Then there is the telephone as an auxiliary to the 
distribution of the forecast. Practically all telephone 
systems in rural communities receive the forecast 
cards which they place before their exchange opera- 
tors with instructions to repeat them to whatever 
subscribers ask for them. Still other companies 



38 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

plug in all the lines at a given hour each day and 
send forth the forecast and whosoever desires may 
take down his receiver and find out what Wash- 
ington says about the storm gods. 

But these are not all of the benefits that the 
Weather Bureau hands out to the folks back home. 
There are the special reports of weather conditions 
in the cotton-growing region and in the wheat and 
corn region during the season of crop development. 
Those men who sit behind mahogany desks and wax 
wealthy through manipulation of the crops of the 
farmer, have their own machinery for knowing what 
are the weather conditions. The farmer has long 
been without this information and was therefore at a 
disadvantage when endeavoring to reach a conclu- 
sion as to whether or not he should hold his produce 
for a higher price. But now the Weather Bureau 
stands ready to extend to any individual farmer in 
given sections a daily report of the weather in his 
part of the world and in all other regions producing 
his kinds of crops. 

Take, for example, the wheat farmer of central 
Kansas, living four miles from a village. There are 
twenty stations in Kansas that report to Kansas 
City. Each of these report high and low tempera- 
ture, rainfall and condition of the weather at time of 
reporting. These are all scheduled and tabulated. 
There are other wheat centers such as Omaha, 
Chicago, Minneapolis, Columbus. Each of these 
gets a similar report and each transmits a report 



REVEALING WEATHER SECRETS 39 

of average conditions in its district to Kansas City. 
Then a slip is made out that shows the detail of the 
report for Kansas and the general averages for the 
other wheat districts. This is the slip that any 
farmer may have every day for the asking and so 
may he personally check up crop possibilities and 
determine whether to sell or to hold his crop. 

Any individual may add to his daily receipt of the 
forecast card the weekly report on weather conditions 
published at Washington. This makes the record 
of what has transpired. It is enlarged into monthly 
reports and finally compiled into an annual. This 
annual record of what has transpired in the way of 
weather is valuable as a historical document, as 
future generations may want to determine whether 
the world is getting wetter or dryer or the old men of 
to-morrow may want to know whether it was raining 
on the day and at the place they were born. 

Then there is the regional bulletin. When, for 
instance, there is a great influx of people into a 
section like South Texas or California, there are 
many people who want authoritative information 
as to climatic conditions there. The government 
has a bulletin that gives the facts as to climate about 
any part of the nation. This bulletin it issues, free 
of charge, to anybody who asks for it. 

These are but a few of the important things that 
the Weather Bureau is doing on the big job. There 
are many others, among the most interesting of 
which may be mentioned the survey of the upper 



40 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

air. Box kites and captive balloons, with instru- 
ments attached, are being sent up four miles and the 
records of rarity of atmosphere, degree of moisture, 
temperature, direction and velocity of wind, are 
being recorded. Free balloons with similar instru- 
ments have been sent to an altitude of eighteen 
miles. The study of the conditions that exist in 
this upper air and of its movements may lead, the 
scientists believe, to an understanding of storm pro- 
duction that will make it possible to forecast for a 
week instead of two days. 

In the meantime the public is learning more and 
more to make use of the Weather Bureau. Trans- 
portation companies, for instance, refuse to ship 
bananas without special provision for their protec- 
tion when the temperature in the car is less than 
fifty-five or more than sixty-five degrees. The 
amount of refrigeration to be furnished for fruit, 
vegetables, eggs, meat, fish, and all such merchandise, 
is based upon the forecast of temperatures during the 
period of transportation. A carload of California 
fruit might be spoiled as completely if subjected to a 
freeze in coming east as it might be by weather that 
was overwarm. 

Delicate truck crops are covered up in advance of 
a storm to prevent frost from killing them. Cran- 
berry bogs are flooded and thus are harvests saved. 
Potato digging is suspended ahead of the storm and 
the potatoes already out of the ground are housed. 
Sugar-cane is cut and put into the windrow. The 



REVEALING WEATHER SECRETS 41 

ice man prepares for the cutting of his stock in trade. 
The maple sugar producer gets his first hint of the 
rising of sap from the weather forecast. The raisin 
grower, whose grapes are laid in the sun, protects 
them when rain is forecast. The producers of mov- 
ing-picture films schedule their operations in accord- 
ance with the weather predictions. When great 
snows are forecast on the continental divide region 
the railroad companies send out the snow plows and 
light freight trains. Ranchmen house their cattle 
in advance of an oncoming norther. All the world 
of picnickers ask the Weather Bureau for advices 
in advance of their outdoor engagements. Marine 
insurance companies refrain from assuming risks 
on cargoes when a storm is predicted. Fishermen 
pull in their nets and protect their boats. Stockmen 
in such regions as the swamp-lands of South Carolina 
drive their cattle into the hills upon receipt of warn- 
ings of the approach of high water. 

In fact, the practical uses of the Weather Bureau 
have come to be legion and are increasing in number 
every day. That all those people who are making 
use of the various forms of information furnished by 
the Weather Bureau may receive an ever improv- 
ing service, Uncle Sam is laboring valiantly year 
after year to make this branch of federal work 
always more and more efficient. 



CHAPTER IV 

EECOMPENSING THE INDIAN 

BECAUSE it robbed him of an empire, the 
federal government is nurturing the Amer- 
ican Indian as carefully as any hothouse 
flower an attempt to make him an upstanding 
citizen among his white fellows. 

To this end it maintains in Washington a great 
governmental bureau, the Indian Office, to look 
over the infinite detail of his affairs. Through this 
office there is annually spent $10,000,000 in his 
interest, while his vast income is administered as 
would be that of a pampered child. He is given 
common schools and colleges, lands and cattle, 
medical and moral supervision. His affairs are 
given infinite attention, he is protected from 
spoliation, he is led into the ways of productiveness 
and self-dependence. 

This is no mean task, for there are 300,000 Indians 
and each one of them must be given individual 
attention. Each one has property, each has prob- 
lems, each is facing a condition of life for which all 
the ages behind him have given him no prepara- 
tion. To administer the estate of these Indians, scat- 
tered throughout the nation and rich beyond com- 

42 



RECOMPENSING THE INDIAN 43 

pare, to care for each ward as painstakingly as 
would the intelligent parent for his own child, to 
work out the ultimate solution of this, one of the 
most vexing questions of the nation, is one of 
the gigantic undertakings of Uncle Sam. 

It all goes back to that time when the Red Man 
was in undisputed possession of all the land from 
ocean to ocean, when its streams swarmed with 
fish, deer trooped abundantly through its woods and 
limitless buffalo herds roamed the virgin prairie. 
The lodge of the Red Man was pitched wher- 
ever bountiful nature provided most easily for his 
wants. He possessed such reaches of land as were 
beyond any possibility of his use. 

The white man came and took it all by force. 
The Red Man was driven back and back until he 
had only such lands as no white man wanted. 
Might made right. The Indian was grievously 
wronged and the whites of this generation confess 
the injustices. Seeing the greater aspects of world 
necessity of more complete use of world resources, 
they justify themselves. The people of the earth 
needed the latent produce of these lands. But the 
Indian nevertheless was grievously wronged. 

For a century the two races were at war. Finally 
there remained no Indians that were not brought into 
subjugation and placed upon restricted reservations. 
The Indian as an active enemy no longer existed. 
He had become a ward, a virtual captive. The 
nation ceased to regard him in the old light. With 



44 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

the passion of battle gone, his case could be viewed 
calmly. A balance was struck and the white man 
found himself irreparably in the debt of the rightful 
owner of America. Now he is trying to pay the 
debt. 

Then there followed a half-century during which 
the Indian was kept on his reservation and furnished 
rations. To be sure, his wants were provided for, 
he did not even have to work or hunt nor do aught 
else for his livelihood. All necessity for and possi- 
bility of doing aught but doze in the sun, was 
removed. This was the period of the Indian's 
decadence. 

At this time an appreciation of the injustice of 
robbing the Indian of his lands began to dawn. The 
inhospitable regions into which the aborigine 
had been driven and where he was assigned reserva- 
tions, began to grow through governmental action 
and include better land. Many Indian tribes were 
allotted broad acres of fair land and given titles to 
it from the government. To be sure, these lands 
had practically no value at the time, but as settle- 
ments have pushed westward, all this has changed. 
The coming of the white man has given the remnant 
of land left to the Indian a money value that all his 
domain would not have possessed had he been left 
in undisputed possession of it. 

In fact, the Indian is the greatest land owner in 
the nation to-day. He owns more timber, more 
coal, more oil, more cattle than any other individual 



RECOMPENSING THE INDIAN 45 

in the United States or in the world. If his assets 
are carefully enumerated he is found to possess, 
roughly, $1,320,000,000 in wealth. 

If this property were divided equally among the 
300,000 Indians remaining, each would be the pos- 
sessor of about $6,600. The census returns show 
that the wealth of the nation, if divided equally 
among its citizens, would give each about $1,000. 
So it is seen that the Indian in the United States 
is about six times as wealthy as the white man. 
Yet the average American is the possessor of such 
wealth as to make all the world jealous and to 
leave him without a financial peer. 

This wealth of the Indian is mostly in land in the 
West. Ten years ago that land was not worth one- 
half its present value. In another decade, it may 
have again doubled in price and this process of 
increase will unquestionably go steadily forward. 
So does it seem probable that the Indian will steadily 
gain in his lead over other men as the possessor 
of most of them all of this world's goods. 

The Yakima Indians, residing in the State of 
Washington, are, for instance, the possessors of 120,- 
000 acres of land that is covered by a new irrigation 
project of the government which has given that land 
a value which runs from $100 to $200 an acre. 

In Washington also there is, on the reservation of 
the Quinielt Indians, a forest which contains prime 
standing timber ready for the ax which is valued at 
$13,000,000. The sturdy fishermen of the tribe will 



46 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

have this money to their credit as soon as the timber 
is sold. 

The Klamath Indians in Oregon, a kindred tribe, 
own a forest that is estimated as being worth $27,- 
000,000. A railroad has just been pushed into this 
region and the cutting of this timber is soon to 
begin. 

Down in Arizona, the Apaches, last of the warlike 
tribes, have standing timber worth $10,000,000. 

Every man, woman, and child among the Osage 
Indians, in Oklahoma, has an income of $600 a year 
from oil leases alone. For each of these Indians the 
government holds a trust fund of $3,800 in cash from 
former land sales. Aside from which they have 
their homes and stock and various other property 
and resources. 

On the lands of the Five Civilized Tribes there is 
in one year produced $10,000,000 worth of oil, of 
which one-eighth came back to the Indians in royal- 
ties. Already $100,000,000 in oil has been pro- 
duced on Indian lands in Oklahoma and the fields 
have been but partially developed. 

On scores of reservations, lands have been sold 
and the money received deposited to the credit of 
the Indians. There are whole tribes of Indians 
who thus have amounts in bank as high as $10,000 
and $15,000 for every individual member. There is 
$55,000,000 in cash standing in bank and cared for 
by the Indian Office to the credit of such Indians. 

But the Indians can get their money only on 



RECOMPENSING THE INDIAN 47 

certain conditions. Through the ages they have been 
a wandering people to whom any accumulation is a 
burden. All their possessions have been habitu- 
ally discarded at moving time. They lived abun- 
dantly from the kill of the day and shunned burden- 
some possessions. Their native tendencies are, 
therefore, to give away rather than to retain. The 
Indian will fill the lap of the casual visitor with his 
most valuable possessions. 

To a people possessing this financial policy as a 
heritage, little would be accomplished by giving 
them large sums of money. Their funds are, 
therefore, taken care of by the Indian Office until 
the time arrives when they have learned something 
of their use. Each individual is carefully studied 
by the Indian agent under whose supervision he 
comes. If the Indian asks for money, the agent 
makes a report on his capability for using it and 
the purpose for which it is to be expended. If the 
Indian wants to build a house, or buy livestock, 
or start a farm, or do any of a thousand advisable 
things, he is provided with the necessary funds. 
But the bureau sees to it that he is not allowed to 
fritter away his cash. 

So does the individual Indian continue the ward 
of the government until he has established his ability 
to take care of himself. When he demonstrates that 
ability his affairs are gradually turned over to him. 
First he is allotted his land. When he shows his 
ability to care for it he is given a title and with that 



48 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

title comes citizenship and the right to cast his vote 
like any other good American. His moneys are 
then given to him as his needs present themselves 
and as he deports himself creditably. Eventually 
he walks alone, performing every act as does any 
other citizen of the republic. But in the meantime 
the infinite detail of administering the affairs of 
these 300,000 minor heirs must be looked after by 
Uncle Sam. 

The Indian Office attempts to master the endless 
detail of this task. Its management has been de- 
veloping steadily toward getting the affairs of the 
Indian on a business basis. But it is probably a 
bigger task than would be the handling of the affairs 
of a billion dollar corporation. The human ele- 
ment enters everywhere and it is a groping human 
element that finds its way with difficulty in the 
half-light of its civilization. 

I was one day in the office of the Commissioner 
when he received a telegram which he handed to 
me. It announced the lease of 10,000 acres of oil 
land on the Osage Reservation. The Indian Office 
had issued proposals for the lease of this land, a 
royalty of one-sixth of all oil produced to be returned 
to the Indians. The old proposals had called for 
but one-eighth. Upon this new basis, the public 
was asked to bid for the privilege of taking the lease. 
The telegram stated that the lease had been 
awarded to the highest bidder and that $480,000 



RECOMPENSING THE INDIAN 49 

had been received as a bonus for the privilege of 
taking the lease on the one-sixth basis. 

This is an example of the tendency to place the 
affairs of the Indian on a business basis and get the 
market value for what he has to dispose of. 

The government holds that the Indian comes 
nearer fitting into the business of stockraising than 
any other calling of the white man. Most of the 
reservations are, also, in regions where there is plenty 
of good range. It is, therefore, determined that 
every encouragement shall be given to the man on 
the reservation to develop herds. 

Again, while I was in the Bureau, an order was 
issued authorizing the purchase of 9,000 head of 
cattle for the Crow Indians. Most of these were 
to be high-grade Herefords for breeding purposes, 
but there were to be certain steers that might be 
marketed in a year or so to demonstrate the possi- 
bilities. All were to be established on the reserva- 
tion, cared for under government supervision, and 
made a demonstration plant for the men of the 
tribe. Incidentally they were paid for out of tribal 
funds, for the Crows had been selling a lot of 
valuable lands. Here was a business operation 
combined with the idea of leading the Indian into 
a self-supporting occupation. 

The whole tendency of the government's super- 
vision of the Indian is directed toward giving him 
the industrial idea of the white man. The govern- 
ment holds that the Indian must adjust himself 



50 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

to the white man's way of life or he will not survive. 
The problem is a difficult one, for it means the 
making over of a race in a single generation. 

The school is probably the most potent influence 
toward the desired end. There are in the United 
States 70,000 Indian children of school age. They 
are located in twenty-six states and upon eighty 
reservations. For these children, there are main- 
tained 325 day schools, all of which specialize on 
industrial courses. There are seventy-five board- 
ing schools on reservations where the children 
are taught to live in accordance with civilized cus- 
toms. In addition to these there are thirty-five 
great industrial schools such as that at Carlisle, 
Pennsylvania; Haskell, Kansas; or Phoenix, Ari- 
zona; which are turning out hundreds of well and 
practically educated young Indians every year. 
In all of these schools there are to-day in attendance 
about 30,000 Indian children. There are, in ad- 
dition, the schools maintained by the various 
churches. 

All this education is industrial, but there are many 
things that work against its always accomplishing 
the desired result. The first of these is the return 
of the student to the reservation where he enters the 
old life which has no opportunities for him to use 
his new knowledge. I met on the Blackfoot reser- 
vation in Montana, an Indian who, fifteen years be- 
fore, was the most famous quarterback that Car- 
lisle had ever produced and who won national note 



RECOMPENSING THE INDIAN 51 

in his play against the great colleges. He was 
graduated from Carlisle but he has gone all the way 
back to the aboriginal and no one would dream that 
he had ever been off the reservation. 

Another of the influences that work against the 
Indians' becoming productive is their wealth. 
When a family of Osages numbering six each re- 
ceives $600 a year from oil leases, a total of $3,600 
for the family which lives very inexpensively, there 
is no need of exertion on the part of any member. 
The very prosperity of the tribes makes the task of 
their development the more difficult. 

But the federal government is earnestly wrestling 
with all of these problems with a determination 
ultimately to solve them. 

Disease stalks abroad among the Indians. Its 
prevalence is a source of great worry to the govern- 
ment and every effort is being made to lessen its 
ravages. 

Tuberculosis is among the most dreaded of the 
Indian diseases. It is estimated that there are now 
30,000 cases among the Indians of the United States. 
This means that one Indian in every ten is affected. 
Of all the deaths on the reservation, 32 per cent, 
are due to this disease. This is a striking per- 
centage, when it is known that only 11 per cent, of 
deaths among whites are caused by tuberculosis. 

There are a number of reasons for the prevalence 
and the fatality of this disease. In the first place, 
the Indian as a race has never had the disease. 



52 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

As a race he has not, therefore, become able to resist 
it as do the whites. Again, the Indian has but just 
been put into the white man's house and does not 
know how to use it. He closes up every crack and 
cranny and lives constantly with the least possible 
amount of ventilation. In the third place, the Indian 
is a fatalist. He believes that what will be will be. 
He, therefore, lends no aid to his own cure. He 
takes no interest in efforts looking to his recovery, 
fails to take medicine as prescribed or live as 
directed. 

There are about one hundred physicians employed 
by the federal government to work among the 
Indians and fifty more who look after certain res- 
ervations under contract. Tuberculosis camps and 
hospitals are being established on many of the 
reservations but the big problem is by no means 
solved. 

Another dread disease that has recently been 
found to be running riot on the reservations is 
trachoma. There are 80,000 Indians in the country 
suffering from this curse of the immigrant, , the 
presence of which has cost many a poor European 
the privilege of coming to America. In Oklahoma, 
it is estimated that 70 per cent, of the Indians suffer 
from trachoma. 

Congress has appropriated $200,000 a year for the 
fight against trachoma. Surgeons who are experts 
on trachoma are assigned to given districts. These 
men travel about and instruct local doctors in the 



RECOMPENSING THE INDIAN 53 

care of this disease of the eyes. All these will be 
made expert in its treatment. They will fight 
against it until it is eventually crowded off the reser- 
vations. So does Uncle Sam perform another great 
service to the Indian and pay one more mite toward 
recompense. He has also put a corps of dentists 
in the field who will visit every school and fill the 
teeth of all pupils free of charge. 

In that wild region of the Rockies where the four 
States of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico 
come together, reside the Navajos, the model tribe 
of them all. These Indians have a reservation as 
big as Connecticut with Vermont thrown in. The 
canyon of the Little Colorado cuts across it and 
makes it a riot of grandeur. The Moquis, famed for 
their snake dance, are in the Navajo family, as are 
many other of the highly intelligent Indians of the 
neighborhood. 

These Indians had been farmers and users of 
water for irrigation before the white man came. 
This manner of life had given them the idea of 
property value. The Spanish Fathers, three cen- 
turies ago, gave them domestic animals — horses, 
cattle, sheep and goats. They took kindly to their 
care and developed herds of great numbers. A 
recent survey of the livestock of the Navajos showed 
that they had 300,000 horses, 30,000 cattle, 1,500,- 
000 sheep and 300,000 goats. 

It is estimated that they annually clip from their 
flocks half a million dollars' worth of wool. The 



54 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

blankets that the Navajos weave have a national 
reputation. Their herds graze far from home and 
are carefully tended. Many of the members of the 
tribe are wealthy in livestock through their own 
efforts. The government is now buying and giving 
these Indians good-blooded animals to improve 
the grade of their stock. Artesian wells are being 
put down that the unwatered grazing lands may be 
used. Every encouragement is being extended the 
tribe that is deporting itself in such a way that the 
Great White Father would like to have all his 
Indian wards follow the example. 

These and other Indians of the Southwest are 
grasping opportunities for farming that are being 
extended through the establishment of irrigation 
facilities. Some millions of dollars have been spent 
in the last decade in bringing water to the lands of 
the Indians and thus making the best sort of farming 
possible for them. In the Southwest they respond 
to these opportunities, but the Indians of the North, 
accustomed to the roving life of the buffalo hunter, 
grasp the farming idea less readily. 

From this brief summary of present conditions it 
may readily be seen that the Indian problem has 
not yet been solved. It is estimated that 30 per 
cent, of the Indians of the country have been 
fairly well started on the road toward making a 
part of the white man's civilization. The 70 per 
cent, are yet beyond the desired influence. There 
are individual Indians who have attracted national 



RECOMPENSING THE INDIAN 55 

attention and have deserved it. But these are the 
great exceptions and should not be taken as an 
indication of particular ability on the part of all the 
members of the race. The mass of the work is still 
ahead, the government realizes the size of its 
problem and is earnest in its determination ulti- 
mately to work it out. 

It is one of those great tasks which is philan- 
thropic in its nature, which has as its object a great 
work of uplift without profit. The American gov- 
ernment is fond of just such unselfish tasks and is 
laboring valiantly upon a number of them. The 
existence of these works and the benevolent and 
unselfish desire to do good on the part of the old 
gentleman who is Uncle to all Americans and who 
typifies the government are such as to give the busy 
Yankee a bit of a heart-swell of pride when he 
occasionally looks behind his governmental curtain. 



CHAPTER V 

TRANSFORMING WESTERN DESERTS 

UNCLE SAM in the guise of the federal 
engineer has waved his magic wand over a 
million parched and thirsty acres of desert 
land in the West, where grew the nondescript sage- 
brush and wandered the solitary coyote, and lo! 
the prosperous farmer is abroad with his clicking 
mowing-machine and big red apples are falling into 
the laps of his children. 

This governmental Moses has smitten the rock at 
the rim of the desert and a river has gushed forth 
to water the valley, for the blow of the giant drove 
a tunnel six miles beneath a mountain and sucked 
a torrent dry. Where the erosion of time has 
eaten mountain ranges in two, the governmental 
titan has welded them again together with cement 
dams behind which have grown great lakes that 
have held flood waters for use when rains come not. 
Rushing streams that have run unceasingly to the 
sea while the lands on their banks have lain barren 
from an age-long thirst, have been diverted and 
have wooed a flowery wealth from forbidding 
nature. 

In every case a transformation has resulted. 

56 



TRANSFORMING DESERTS 57 

Wherever waters were made captive, canals grew. 
These ditches always led to lands that were thirsty 
but in whose virgin laps lay such productivity as 
is to be found only in the unsullied desert. Every- 
where settlers have awaited the coming of the 
water. Their shovels have directed it to the 
lands where the seed have already been planted. 
The only element lacking, moisture, has thus been 
supplied and wheatfields have taken the place of 
desert growth and fat cattle munch their cuds 
where formerly scudded the horned toad. 

The federal government has been engaged in the 
work of reclaiming deserts only since 1902. In 
that time it has expended a hundred million dollars 
and the work is half done on the projects already 
laid down. It was in 1902 that the Reclamation 
Service came into being, Congress having provided 
for it and set aside for its maintenance certain 
moneys coming in from the sale of public lands. 
Even then the government possessed much land 
in the West that was selling very rapidly to settlers, 
the income from this source which went into the 
Reclamation fund amounting to about $7,000,000 
a year. As choice lands steadily grew scarcer, sales 
fell off and the income grew less and the govern- 
ment was forced to issue bonds against the land 
for its reclamation. 

There are, however, twenty-eight great projects 
scattered from Canada to Mexico, and from the 
Missouri River to the Pacific coast which are being 



58 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

carried steadily forward to completion. Half of 
them are already practically done. When the 
construction of all is finished, there will be 5,000 
square miles of this desert land spreading out invit- 
ingly and ready to be transformed into a region of 
the most intense productiveness of any to be found 
on the continent. This area, irrigated by the works 
of the federal government, will be about equal in 
size to the State of Connecticut. It will furnish 
model farms to 62,000 families, or more than a 
quarter of a million of people. 

But these tasks for titans that are making over 
Nature's map! How are they performed? Let 
us have a look. 

A decade ago, there rushed through the precipi- 
tous mountains of Colorado, a torrent which for the 
span of a lifetime had defied mankind. The 
Gunnison River had cut its way a mile deep into a 
rocky gorge and its swift flowing water broke into 
treacherous rapids and plunged over many a bluff 
for falls for hundreds of feet. Through all the reach 
of the stream there were no agricultural lands, no 
grazing lands, no power possibilities — nothing for 
which the stream could be used. At one point the 
river flowed at the foot of a mountain beyond which, 
six miles away, there spread a virgin desert, made 
barren for lack of water. 

Some daring government engineer conceived the 
idea of driving a tunnel from the valley to the bed 
of the mad river, of stealing it and of bringing it into 



TRANSFORMING DESERTS 59 

the valley where it would cause the development 
of such prosperity that races to come would call it 
blessed. These engineers rode down the Gunnison 
Canyon on mattresses inflated with air, negotiated 
its waterfalls, explored its entire length. Finally, 
they located a camp where the town of River 
Portal afterward grew and from which point the 
six-mile tunnel through the rock was started. So 
deep was the gorge in which this town was planted 
that the sun shown but twenty minutes a day in its 
journey from east to west. 

A road to bring machinery and supplies to River 
Portal had to be cut in the solid rock of the moun- 
tain-side. Labor and supplies were obtained with 
the utmost difficulty. Yet soon the great drills 
were being worked by the hardy miners and from 
each side of the mountain the tunnel grew until it 
met beneath without the sixteenth of an inch vari- 
ance from the manner in which the engineers had 
planned that it should. This tunnel was eleven feet 
in diameter. There is no other tunnel in the 
world six miles long. It cost $3,000,000 to make it, 
but beyond the mountains to-day spreads the Un- 
compahgre Valley, blooming with roses, producing 
apples and peaches such as are grown only on the 
western slope of the Rockies, yielding larger returns 
in potatoes, in alfalfa, and in grain, to a region where 
all these things are greatly needed. The stolen river 
has worked the miracle. 

Probably the most striking feat of all was accom- 



60 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

plished where the floods of the high mountains of 
Arizona used to reach the sands of her desert, 
run rampant at certain seasons but leave vegetable 
life impossible at others except through irrigation. 
For the Roosevelt Dam has stopped their flow and 
made them prisoner. 

In the Tonto Basin, where thirty years ago sheep- 
men and cattlemen met in the greatest warfare of 
its kind that the West has ever known, was laid 
down the plan for this great reservoir. Across the 
mouth of this basin, to a towering height of 280 feet, 
has been built a great concrete wall which measures 
1,080 feet on top, and which unites the points of two 
mountains which the torrents had cut asunder 
when the world was young. In building this dam 
and the canals that run from it and the roads that 
lead to it and the power plants that have been 
incidental, there has been expended ten millions of 
dollars. 

Yet the miracle wrought is such that no one can 
doubt the wisdom of this expenditure. Back of this 
dam are two valleys, one twelve miles and the other 
fifteen miles in length, and each from two to three 
miles wide. These have been transformed into a 
lake 200 feet deep in places and containing enough 
water to cover the State of Delaware one foot deep. 
This reservoir when full has a capacity sufficient to 
fill a canal 300 feet wide and nineteen feet deep, ex- 
tending from Chicago to San Francisco. It would 
submerge the entire city of Chicago, which embraces 



TRANSFORMING DESERTS 61 

190 square miles, to a depth of eleven and a half 
feet. 

Forty miles below this dam spreads out the valley 
of the Salt River, an oasis in the desert waste sixty 
miles long and thirty miles wide, which under the 
influence of this stored water yields up such re- 
turns from the soil as is beyond the comprehension 
of a man who knows farming from the standpoint of 
the East. Six crops of hay are cut each season in 
this valley and two tons to the acre are ordinary 
yields. Ten acres is enough to support a family. A 
densely settled farming community that defies the 
world as a place to live has grown up in this region 
from which the desert stretches for a thousand miles 
in all directions. 

In the State of Washington, on what is known as 
the Yakima project, Reclamation engineers have 
performed another fantastic feat which is a new 
thing in engineering. They have built a canal in the 
valley and lifted it span by span to the mountain 
side far above, where they have placed it in a nook, 
linked it together and driven through it the torrents 
of water that make a great plain fertile. 

There were twelve miles of this canal that had to 
be so constructed. The reservoir that stored the 
water was at a level above the plain which was to be 
irrigated but the only way to the plain was along 
the steep side of the mountain. The engineers 
realized that a canal in such a position, were its 
water ever to escape their control, would tear such a 



62 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

gash down the mountain as to make its mending 
practically impossible. They decided to put it in a 
concrete trough from which it could not escape. 

In the valley below the hillside great molds were 
made and concrete poured into them in such a way 
as to make sections of the canal which would be 
eight feet across the top and six feet in depth. A 
trolley was swung from the mountain top to the 
valley below, and as these links in the canal were 
completed, they were swung up the trolley and 
welded one by one into this twelve- mile trough. 
To-day the water is flowing through it and the 
plains which they irrigate are producing great 
quantities of those apples that made Washington 
famous, and of hops which here grow to perfection. 

The Colorado River, the Nile of America, after 
cutting the greatest of gorges, the Grand Canyon, 
emerges upon the flat lands of southern California 
and Arizona and bears great floods of muddy water 
to the Pacific. For hundreds of miles toward its 
lower reaches, it is bordered by the great Colorado 
Desert, dry est of all Uncle Sam's lands. 

To divert this muddy flood on to these lands was 
one of the earliest undertakings of the government 
engineers, and this task, to a certain extent, they 
have completed. Ten miles above Yuma, in the 
southwestern corner of Arizona, these engineers 
planned to lay down a dam that would raise this 
great river to such an elevation that its water might 



TRANSFORMING DESERTS 63 

be diverted into canals that would flow on to the 
mesas. 

As deep as they might dig, they found only sand 
as a foundation upon which to place a structure 
intended to accomplish this purpose. Upon such 
a foundation, the concrete dams that are usually 
built might not be laid down, so a lesson was learned 
from the Indians who had lived thousands of years 
among those sandy streams and had discovered some 
of their secrets. A structure known as an Indian 
weir dam was built, bedded in the sand and reaching 
a distance of half a mile across this mad and muddy 
stream. It was a great fight to put down this dam 
while the never-ceasing water rushed by, but in 
the end the task was accomplished and the project 
came into operation. 

From this dam the water might be diverted to the 
California side but not to the Arizona side. In the 
face of this difficulty, a second unprecedented thing 
was undertaken by these government engineers. 
Bringing the water to a point on the California side 
opposite Yuma, they determined to siphon it under 
the great stream and bring it again to the surface on 
the Arizona soil. Huge caissons were driven which 
lead the canal far underground. At this low level, 
the tube which was to form the aqueduct was pushed 
through the sands below the Colorado River until 
it had reached the Arizona side. Here again a great 
shaft was sunk which connected with the tunnel, 
and through this the canal was again brought to the 



64 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

surface. The siphon laid down was 930 feet in length 
and fourteen feet in diameter, and carried beneath 
this great stream enough of the life-giving water to 
build a little empire in this corner of Arizona where 
grow the dates and figs and citrous fruits, competing 
with the valley of the Nile, whose reputation for 
fertility comes down in legends of old. 

The highest dam in the world is located in 
northern Wyoming. When the springtime showers 
and sunshine fall upon the snowy peaks and lofty 
mountains of the eastern rim of the Yellowstone 
Park, thousands of streams rush downward and 
fill to brimming the swift-flowing Shoshone River. 
This flood, which for ages has gone on unchecked 
and uncontrolled, now sends its strength against a 
massive wall of concrete with which the government 
engineers have blocked the canyon. A beautiful 
lake one hundred feet deep and covering ten square 
miles is the result. In the remarkable gash that 
the Shoshone cuts in the mountains with perpen- 
dicular walls 1,000 feet high, the government has 
erected this dam. It is a wedge of concrete 238 feet 
from base to top, yet so perpendicular was the gorge 
in which it was built that it is only 200 feet long 
at the top. 

But the glory of the Shoshone Dam is soon to be 
lost; for in Idaho, twenty-three miles from Boise, is 
being erected the Arrow Rock Dam which will have 
a height of 351 feet and which will therefore surpass 
the former record-breaker. To get a foundation 



TRANSFORMING DESERTS 65 

for this dam, it was necessary to excavate to a depth 
of ninety feet; and to assure themselves a sufficient 
base for the great structure, the engineers cleared 
off the bedrock for an area of one acre, and from this 
base, to a height of 351 feet will rise the solid mass 
of masonry. 

But what is to be the largest dam in all the world 
is taking shape down in New Mexico. The waters 
of the huge drainage basin that are led down to the 
sea through the Rio Grande are to be blocked in 
their progress a few miles above El Paso and there 
is to be formed such an artificial lake as exists no 
other place on earth. The New Assouan Dam in 
Egypt, which has long boasted the greatest storage 
capacity of any such structure, contains when full, 
enough water to cover 2,000,000 acres to a depth 
of one foot. The Elephant Butte Dam in New 
Mexico will have a capacity 50 per cent, greater 
than this, its nearest rival. 3,000,000 acre feet 
of water will rest back of it when filled and pour 
out at call this vast quantity of life-giving moisture 
which will bring fertility to desert lands in New 
Mexico, Texas, and across the border in Mexico 
itself, for the enterprise is partly international. 

There would be enough water stored here to cover 
the city of Greater New York — Bronx, Brooklyn, 
and all — up to the second story of its multitude of 
buildings and would make business possible only 
through the use of boats. Were it applied to the 
District of Columbia, the capitol city of the nation 



66 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

would find itself submerged to a depth of a hundred 
feet, with only the Capitol, Washington Monument, 
and a few such landmarks sticking out of the flood. 

This climax of irrigation is in the land where the 
people of Montezuma were thus using the water 
when the Spanish Fathers first brought the gospel 
to the natives. Here was the very germinating 
point of the whole idea of irrigation so far as the 
United States is concerned; and here is this great 
development to be interposed upon that sytem of old. 

At a score of places where these reclamation pro- 
jects have gone in, the waters that rush from them 
and tumble over falls in their canals have been 
harnessed and are now generating such quantities 
of electricity as to supply the country with cheap 
power for hundreds of miles around. At the 
Roosevelt Dam, there is a great power house which 
furnishes electricity for Phoenix and Mesa; for the 
operation of pumps that lift the water from desert 
wells to make the lands of certain Indians fertile; 
and powerful currents that operate huge mining 
processes in such great copper producing regions as 
those which surround the town of Globe. One 
mining company at Globe pays to the government 
$400,000 a year for electric power, and this sum is 
almost enough to pay the interest on all the money 
invested in the project. 

At Yuma, a drop in the canal generates sufficient 
electricity to lift the water to a higher level at a 
point lower down and convert a burning mesa into 



TRANSFORMING DESERTS 67 

a series of lemon groves. The Huntley project 
in Montana gives a demonstration of a canal which 
lifts itself by its own boot-straps. At a certain 
point on this canal, there is a waterfall and above it 
there is a plateau that requires irrigation. The 
government has installed a power plant at this point 
which works automatically without even the neces- 
sity of the presence of an attendant. The fall 
generates the power which lifts a part of the canal 
to the heights above as other portions of its water go 
tumbling down the stream. 

Od the Truckee-Carson Project, the Strawberry 
Valley Project, and various others, electricity is 
generated and used for whatever purposes local 
needs may require. As all these proj ects will eventu- 
ally be owned by the farmers who use the water, 
this electricity is also their property to be used for 
street-car lines, electric lights, local industries, 
telephones, all manner of enterprises that require 
this sort of power. These will be supplied with it 
by the community itself and at a price that is 
nominal. So are the oases in the desert becoming 
demonstration plants of the most modern use of 
water power, and of the community ownership and 
application of that power. 

All these things have been accomplished in a 
decade. Their accomplishment has not been with- 
out local strife and dissatisfaction, and an oc- 
casional suggestion of mismanagement, and even 
of fraud. But they have all demonstrated the 



68 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

correctness of this policy of making myriads of 
blades of grass grow where none grew before. They 
have shown the possibility of calling into being many 
thousands of the best sorts of homes for the use of 
corresponding numbers of good American families. 

These engineers who have grappled with Nature 
in her most forbidding guise and have come off 
with the laurels are, however, looking into the 
future and seeing visions of yet bigger things that 
may be accomplished. They look upon the Colum- 
bia River which rolls through those vast reaches 
of Washington and Oregon, cradled in a gash of the 
earth 200 to 300 feet deep, which offers no possi- 
bility of being dammed. Yet on the mesas and 
plateaus above this stream are great quantities 
of barren lands which cry out for the floods of water 
that it carries unused to the sea. These engineers 
are groping for the plan which will make this rush- 
ing stream generate sufficient power to lift itself 
to the top of its high banks and to do this at an 
expense so small that there will be profit in the 
accomplishment. They expect this will eventually 
be done. 

That other great flood of the West, the Colorado, 
is but slightly used for irrigation. The Reclamation 
Service has turned a small amount of it into the des- 
ert, and gardens of tropical productiveness have re- 
sulted. But there is yet a waste in Southern 
California as large as the State of New York which 
might be likewise served. These wonder-workers 



TRANSFORMING DESERTS 69 

expect in time to bring about a condition under 
which every particle of the water of this great river 
will be thus set to the growing of oranges, and dates, 
and grape-fruit, and pine-apples, and those other 
fruits that are of a region a bit warmer than any 
of the rest of the United States and upon the 
growing of which this region has a practical 
monopoly. 



CHAPTER VI 

SHACKLING THE MISSISSIPPI 

AFTER a thirty-year fight the government's 
army engineers find themselves in the 
very midst of their attempt to tame the 
mad waters of that greatest of streams, the Mississ- 
ippi. From the point where its headwaters reach 
into the valleys of New York, to the crystal lakes 
on the Canadian border and again to the top of the 
continental divide in the Rockies, the waters of 
the Mississippi have been followed into the funnel 
that takes them to the sea below New Orleans. 
There is a million and a quarter square miles in the 
area of the fan of the great stream thus spread out. 
Upon it might be unrolled five German empires. 
Within its borders lies 41 per cent, of all the land 
of continental United States. Every drop of rain 
that falls in all that vast expanse, the snows of its 
winters, the gush of the crystal springs, must find 
their way between the levees of its lower reaches. 
Uncle Sam is trying to control this vast flood. 

Through the ages the stream has run rampant. 
Its torrents have torn down from its widecast 
mountains, have ripped through its prairies where 
they would, have flooded the 60,000 square miles of 
its lower valley at will and wandered into the sea 

70 



SHACKLING THE MISSISSIPPI 71 

through all manner of outlet. The mad power of 
all this water has known no force that dared grapple 
with it until the pale-face came from across the sea, 
settled in the empire that it drained, and found that 
these erratic ways interfered with the conduct 
of his business. 

This frail man-creature stepped forth and issued 
his orders to the great stream. He commanded that 
it should so deport itself at its mouth as to cut a 
channel that should be always thirty-five feet deep 
instead of nine, that his ships might pass in safety to 
the cities beyond. He ordered that it should stick 
to one narrow channel instead of cavorting about the 
country, for he had need of these overflow lands as 
well as of the stable stream. He wove great mile- 
long aprons for the river banks with trees for yarn 
that they might not be cut into by the changeful 
stream. He put forth his dams that checked the 
low- water flow of the upper rivers and doubled their 
depth. His fleet of dredges gave deepness to stream 
stretches where sandbars insisted on casting them- 
selves up. From the gulf to the headwaters various 
orders have gone forth and the mighty stream and 
its 13,000 miles of tributaries are being disciplined 
into obedience. 

This great task is being performed by the army 
engineers — those same men who have just com- 
pleted the Panama Canal in record time, who have 
given New York harbor her channel to the sea 
2,000 feet wide, have penetrated the Philippine 



n UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

jungles with highways, have built a Gibraltar at 
Honolulu, constructed Washington Monument, and 
jettied the entrances to a score of great harbors. 

The peculiar position occupied by the engineers 
of the army is not fully appreciated. In the first 
place, this is the oldest organization of engineers in 
America. The military school at West Point was 
established in 1800 that engineers might be trained 
and was the first school of engineering in America 
and practically had the field to itself for half a 
century thereafter. So was placed in the hands of 
the army practically all the important work of this 
sort in the early days of development. 

The army engineers came into being largely for the 
purpose of building fortifications, but recently this 
has become the less important part of their work. 
Wherever there develops a great task the govern- 
ment has come to ask the advice of these engineers 
and, almost universally, to turn it over to them. 

West Point is primarily an engineering school. 
The discipline of it, its insistence upon the main- 
tenance of manhood standards, and the public 
service idea that underlies it, make a strong founda- 
tion for the building up of an unusual corps of 
workers. The engineers are selected men who are 
graduated at the head of their classes. These 
honor men are then put through a period of ten 
years at practical work which gives them opportunity 
for special development and for the elimination of 
the less fit. For ten years more they are assigned 



SHACKLING THE MISSISSIPPI 73 

to the big works but with a score of checks upon their 
performances and a prompt reminder of any short- 
coming. To the very end of their careers every 
piece of work they do must pass a division engineer, 
the chief of engineers and a special board of review. 
The requirements are for flawless work and a life- 
time is devoted to making this sort of work possible. 

Congress has acquired the habit of asking a report 
from these engineers on all work for which appro- 
priations are asked. The skill of this great organiza- 
tion with the highly developed individuals, with 
the elaborate systems of checks, with its removal 
from all outside influence, has come to make its 
reports regarded as the very last word upon the 
given project. It is said of the army engineers 
that there is no court in the world that delivers a 
verdict with the same elaborate and skilful weighing 
of evidence that it applies. 

The early French settlers had to portage their 
goods from Lake Ponchartrain to the Mississippi 
when they traveled from the settlement at Boloxi, 
on the coast, to Point Coupee, on the great river. 
After dragging their boats across this neck of land 
they camped on the banks of the Mississippi. A 
little village eventually grew there and its location 
was found favorable as trade grew. It came to be 
known as New Orleans, and grew to be the southern 
port of a great nation. It developed that by acci- 
dent the location had been at a deep place in the 
river, else the city would never have been. 



74 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

The first levee that was ever built on the Mississ- 
ippi was a narrow ridge thrown up around this 
settlement to keep back the floods. From that 
beginning there has grown a system of 1,500 miles 
of great levees from Memphis to the sea that is the 
most extensive work of its kind in all the world. 

This levee protection grew sporadically and under 
various influences. Individual landowners sought 
to protect their holdings, districts banded together 
for the same purpose, states took up the work more 
extensively and, finally, the government realized 
that this was a national affair and leant a hand. 
At present, there is cooperation between the nation 
and the states and the work of the lower stream is 
carried on under a commission. 

The levees, having thus grown haphazard, are 
not uniform nor built always as they should be. 
The breastworks of defense against the floods are, 
however, thrown up from Memphis to the sea and 
are of the same general character. 

The typical Mississippi levee is fifteen feet high, 
150 feet wide at the bottom and eight feet across 
the top. They are made of ordinary earth and a sod 
of Bermuda grass is planted over them to prevent 
their erosion. At some places the height is as much 
as twenty-five feet and the width in proportion. 
There are places in this great river where the water 
is sixty-five feet higher at some times than at others 
and a difference of fifty feet between high and low 
water is almost general. It is difficult to appreciate 



SHACKLING THE MISSISSIPPI 75 

the amount of water that passes Vicksburg when the 
floods pile sixty-five feet on top of what is already 
a great river and bear that current, miles wide, on 

to the sea. 

Under the army engineers, this levee is being 
standardized, and eventually it will be developed 
to a degree of stability where it can be pretty well 
depended on to carry these floods on to the sea 
while the fertile fields of cotton and cane repose in 
safety at a level twenty feet below the surface of 
the water of the river. Already $60,000,000 has 
been spent upon this 1,500 miles of levee and the 
great stream is nearing control in these lower reaches. 

Every year the Mississippi brings down to the 
Gulf enough sediment to cover thirty square miles 
to a depth of one foot or one square mile to the depth 
of thirty feet. When the moving water of the river 
strikes the still water of the Gulf, all this suspended 
matter is deposited. The muddy water spreads out 
when it reaches the Gulf and so deposits a bar be- 
yond its mouth over which there is normally but 
nine feet of water with a tendency to fill in behind 
this bar. All the land below Memphis has been built 
by the pushing forward of this bar through the ages. 
This bar would effectually shut out the big ships 
of the world and none of them could get into the 
great river if something were rot done. 

The Mississippi spreads out at its mouth and 
flows through several channels with portions of its 
new-made land between. The first idea was that 



76 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

one of these passes should be selected and kept 
dredged to a certain depth. But it was found that 
the silt deposited so rapidly that there would be no 
permanence to such work, and another way out was 
sought. 

It was back in the seventies when an engineer 
named Eads proposed an alternative. He held that 
if jetties were built which narrowed the stream, it 
would be forced to cut its channel to the required 
depth and that it would give the muddy water 
such an impetus that it would carry the silt far out 
into the Gulf before it slowed down to the point 
where it would drop it. 

The government gave Eads a contract upon 
which he was ultimately to receive $10,000,000 and 
he built the first jetties and these were to a certain 
extent successful and gave a depth of twenty-six 
feet to the Gulf. Thus was the river opened to big 
ships. 

This was called the South Pass and through it 
commerce has been passing for thirty years. But in 
the end the ships of the nations grew so large that 
the depth of this pass was not sufficient to accom- 
modate them. The force of the water that went 
through the South Pass was not sufficient to scour 
a bigger channel; so another of the outlets was 
selected, the Southwest Pass, and government en- 
gineers began trying for a depth of thirty-five feet 
and have spent, since 1902, $8,000,000 in the at- 
tempt. To-day, the current is cleaning its own 



SHACEXING THE MISSISSIPPI 77 

channel thirty-five feet deep and will continue to 
do so until the depositing silt has filled up a great 
hole in the Gulf and built a bar in its place. It 
has been a ten-year fight to get the channel and 
the battle must go on constantly to the end of time 
for its maintenance. 

Throughout the length of the Mississippi and the 
Missouri there is found the constant tendency on the 
part of these erratic streams to cut into the banks 
and whatever levees may be thrown up, to under- 
mine them and cause them to tumble into the 
stream. Many levee breaks have been thus caused 
and even high banks upon which have stood villages 
have been tumbled into the river. 

The army engineers studied methods of prevent- 
ing this cutting for many years. Eventually, they 
settled upon the woven treecloth mattresses as 
offering the greatest amount of protection and for a 
decade they have been manufacturing these clothes 
for the river bank and these banks have been 
wearing them summer and winter. 

The job of weaving that is here carried on is 
stupendous. The warp and woof that go into the 
making of these mattresses are willow trees. Tops 
and branches of the trees as large as four inches in 
diameter are gathered together in great barge- 
loads. A pattern is started with steel cables as a 
basis and into this is woven the willows. The 
pattern may be as wide as 250 feet. In a single 
piece it may extend a thousand feet downstream 



78 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

and cover ten acres of land. The principle of its 
weaving is the same as that which produces gossamer 
silk, but the product is far different. 

When one piece is finished, it is anchored in the 
place where protection is desired and stone is put 
on to weight it down and hold it in its place. The 
barges are moved a bit upstream and another 
section is begun which will overlap a little upon the 
piece below. In this way, the banks of the stream 
for miles where cutting is threatened may be lined 
and the water be kept back from the soft dirt that 
might be washed away. 

The mattress lies beneath the water, and, not 
being exposed to the air, lasts almost indefinitely. 
The part of the bank that is above water at times 
is revetted with stone to prevent cutting. So is a 
current-proof bank provided and so have great 
stretches on both the Mississippi and the Missouri 
been made stable. 

On the Ohio there is an entirely different task 
upon which Uncle Sam is spending $65,000,000. 
There he is putting a series of fifty-four dams 
that he may control the stream flow in such a 
way as to give a depth of nine feet of water for river 
traffic at all seasons of the year. 

It is almost a thousand miles from Pittsburg to 
the Mississippi and the coal barges that float down 
the Ohio are innumerable. There are seasons of the 
year when the water is so shallow that it may not 
be used for this sort of traffic and the fleets are 



SHACKLING THE MISSISSIPPI 79 

loaded and moored in the vicinity of Pittsburg, 
and wait for the coming of high water. At one 
time it was calculated that 1,200,000 tons of coal 
waited at Pittsburg for higher water. The loss in 
holding the barges amounted to $3,000 a day and 
they waited five months before the necessary depth 
was secured. 

Such conditions as these convinced Congress that 
it would be advisable so to improve the Ohio that 
vessels drawing nine feet of water might ply back and 
forth at all seasons of the year. This decision was 
reached in 1910 and since that time the federal 
government has turned over each year to its army 
engineers $5,000,000 to be spent on this stream. 

And the plan for bringing about the desired result 
is most novel. Fifty-four dams are to be thrown 
across the river. These are not, however, dams that 
bar the river under normal conditions. As long 
as the stream measures nine feet deep the dams lie 
flat upon the bottom. When the stream gets low 
and the depths become shallow, they rise up and 
check the passing water until it creates the desired 
depth. Likewise does each dam fill a lock by its 
side, thus providing for the letting down or the 
lifting up of boats and barges. 

These are known as needle dams. They are made 
of sections two feet wide and ten to eighteen feet 
long. These sections lie flat on the bottom of the 
river until needed. Then they are raised into a 
vertical position one at a time. A prop drops into 



80 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

place and they are held in this position. The course 
of the river is effectually blocked. A lake is formed 
above them that has a sufficient depth for naviga- 
tion. The fifty-four of these dams will fill in the 
shallow reaches and maintain the nine-foot depth 
throughout the length of the stream from Pittsburg 
to Cairo. 

The federal government, through its army engi- 
neers, is spending $20,000,000 more on the Missouri 
River between Kansas City and St. Louis. This 
project was given the sanction of Congress in 1912 
and about $4,000,000 a year has been provided 
for it. 

Here, however, the problem is entirely different 
from that on the Ohio. There are no locks nor 
dams. The depth of flow to be maintained is six 
feet instead of nine. The difficulty is in preventing 
the river from eating away its banks, carrying them 
down the stream and converting them into shoals 
and sand-bars. 

The first step is to maintain banks, for it is 
with the cavings of these that the river channel is 
constantly filled up. The stream is to be prevented 
from eating into its banks. To accomplish this the 
banks are to be protected in many places with 
mattresses and revetment. In other places spurs 
and dykes are to be thrown out into the stream to 
control its course and keep it in a channel that does 
not change. 

On the Mississippi from St. Louis to St. Paul, the 



SHACKLING THE MISSISSIPPI 81 

government is spending each year $1,500,000 in its 
attempt to establish and maintain a depth of six 
feet. It has been working on this upper stream for 
many years and this depth is pretty well established. 
It is accomplished by the use of dykes that keep 
the stream narrowed and in place, by an oc- 
casional dam where needed, and by a bit of dredging 
here and there. 

There are three great storage reservoirs near the 
headwaters of the Mississippi that were built so 
long ago as to have been almost forgotten. There 
are three principal lakes that furnish water to this 
river near its origin. Across the mouth of each of 
these was thrown a dam some thirty years ago. 
These dams raise the water twelve feet in the lakes 
and allow great amounts of it to accumulate in the 
wet season. Then, when the time of low water 
comes, the flood-gates are opened and the stored 
water is let out. The result is a depth of fourteen 
inches at St. Paul above what the flow would be if 
the reservoirs were not in operation. 

From St. Louis to Cairo the government spends 
each year a million dollars in an attempt to main- 
tain a depth of eight feet for navigation. The river 
has been pretty well established in a channel of that 
depth. It requires, however, a good deal of dredg- 
ing that must be constantly done all along the 
stream at places where the current may not or has 
not yet been made to cut its own channel. At all 
the stations from St. Paul and Kansas City to the 



82 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

jetties at the mouth of the stream the dredges work 
constantly through the low-water season. 

So it appears that the control of the stream flow of 
this great river basin, taken in all aspects, is no 
mean task. It is the government's most expensive 
task next to that of building the Panama Canal. 
It is a job partly prompted by the needs of commerce 
but partly by the desire of a benevolent government 
to make life safe along the great stream that many 
men and women may dwell there in prosperity and 
happiness. It is a task that will remain with this 
generation and be bequeathed to the next but the 
details of which have been pretty well mastered. 




PORTO RICO NATIVE TAKING PIGS TO MARKET 



T 



CHAPTER VII 

HELPING THE FARMER'S WIFE 

^HE federal government through it svarious 
departments has surveyed the field and come 
to the conclusion that things are amiss in 
the rural home. I have talked long with the wise 
men in the government service and draw the fol- 
lowing picture largely from the information they 
furnish. 

Were the six millions of farmers' wives in the 
United States placed in a caldron, fused into one 
homogeneous mass, enough of it chopped out to 
make one woman — the typical farm woman — and 
were she depicted to the people as she is, there 
would be the greatest tragedy of American civiliza- 
tion; and so commonplace is this tragedy, so often 
recurring, so long portrayed, that the senses of the 
people are dulled to it. The masses do not realize 
its presence, and the very star performers in it are 
unaware of the parts they play. The cause of it all 
— the farmer himself — does not know the thing 
that is going on in his very household. So subtly 
and gradually has it borne down upon the victim 
that neither she nor any of the other members of her 
family have realized her crushing. 

83 



84 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

But this typical farm woman ! Let us take a look 
at her as though she were a creature seen for the 
first time and, therefore, seen with the vividness of a 
first impression. As representative of a hardware 
dealer in the adjacent town we have called on her 
husband. It is spring and soon the rattle of the 
mowing-machine is to be heard in the land. The 
fields are just beginning to show the tassel of the 
barley, and the oats coming to head, and the farmer 
needs a new machine and we are here to sell it to 
him. Hale and hearty and prosperous, he asks us 
to dinner and we accept the invitation. 

We see the farmer's wife for the first time. It is 
but a fleeting glance as she passes an open doorway, 
while we wait in the bare sitting-room. We catch 
the dark hair combed straight back and knotted, 
then the blue calico dress falling unbroken in one 
piece and tied about with a checked apron. Such a 
slim and gaunt figure, we think. We look at her 
more closely when we come to table. This farmer is 
thirty-five years of age, and, knowing the manner of 
rural marriages, the wife must be two years younger. 
Yet she looks a woman past the prime of life, and 
broken. Her thinness is appalling. Not an ounce 
of flesh shows on her stooped and wiry frame. 
There are no signs of the feminine tendencies to 
adorn the person, nor is there a vestige left of the 
softer qualities that go to make up the appeal of 
woman to man. There is the one characteristic, 
that of activity, for she is intensely busy. Yes, and 



HELPING THE FARMER'S WIFE 85 

one other — a look of hunger in the eyes and a hang- 
ing on the words of the stranger when he talks of the 
things of the outside, the things of which she has so 
little opportunity to know. 

Yet we are aware that this woman is not an indi- 
vidual, but a type. We have seen her in the rail- 
way trains where two seats were turned together 
and many children sucked striped sticks of candy. 
We have seen her with the same children about the 
counter in the country grocery. Swarms of her lend 
a somber element to the gay throngs that turn out 
in rural communities on circus day. Come to think 
of it, our mothers looked like this when we first 
remember them in the boyhood days when we 
were so happy and carefree back on the farm. 
How thin she has always been ! 

There is a lot to be found out about this woman, 
and it is vital to know of her. It is she who bears 
the brunt of feeding the multitude for which the 
farmer receives so much praise. It is she who 
gives birth, before her vitality is sapped, to the 
men who make history. It is she who is martyred 
even in the times of peace and plenty. It is a use- 
less martyrdom, for it is easily preventable, and 
for this reason it is especially important that her 
condition and the causes of it should be known. 

In the first place, you will be told that it is all 
bosh about the unfavorable conditions on the farm; 
that the farmers last year raised seven billions of 
dollars' worth of produce and that they have given 



86 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

themselves the uplift. Conditions are not at all 
like they used to be on the farm, you are told, for 
these men are now riding in automobiles, and 
running water has been put in the house. You 
visited a farm in Iowa last summer and found these 
things to exist. 

There is a lot of truth in some of your statements, 
for the farmers have made a great deal of money, and 
in some communities there are hundreds of con- 
veniently arranged and ideal homes on the farms. 
We are glad you mentioned these ideal homes and 
that there are so many of them, for they prove the 
possibilities of farm life. They should be pro- 
vided for all the farms, and they may be provided, 
but they are not. The consensus of opinion of the 
greatest authorities in this country upon farm con- 
ditions is to the effect that probably 10 per cent, 
of the farmers are grasping their opportunities for 
better living in so far as the home is concerned, 
and that the condition of but 10 per cent, of the 
women is improved. Strange to say, with the vast 
majority there has come a worse condition with the 
development of the farm and the advent of pros- 
perity. The Country Life Commission, some years 
ago appointed by the President, traveled the coun- 
try over and found this to be a fact. The prac- 
tical men of the Department of Agriculture state 
the condition as a fact. We who grew up on the 
farm, but have since gained another viewpoint, 
see its tragedies and are not misled by the stories 



HELPING THE FARMER'S WIFE 87 

of the automobile farmers which are giving the 
general public the idea that Sherrys and Martins 
are losing their chefs to these rural autocrats. 

The tale of the way the wife got the worst of it 
is the simple tale of the development of the farm. 
A young farmer and his wife, f o^r example, went West 
twenty years ago to carve out for themselves a 
future in a new land, or moved on to a new farm 
adjoining those on which they grew up. They were 
young and strong and courageous and laughed in 
the face of the difficulties they met. They staked 
out their farm in the forest primeval and felled the 
trees and built themselves a cabin. The man 
labored in the clearing all day and the wife sang 
merrily about the house. Her inside duties were, 
however, simple and easy, and she found plenty of 
time to make a garden, care for the chickens, and 
often lend a hand in the work of the field. Her 
task was lighter than her husband's in the fight 
against the pioneer conditions. 

The husband worked persistently and the clear- 
ing grew. As the years passed, the crops covered 
a greater and greater acreage, and the harvests 
brought more money. A larger house was built and 
its care required more labor. A hired man was 
necessary in caring for the farm, and his meals 
must be cooked. The old cow had developed into 
a herd of eight or ten, and there was milk and 
butter in abundance to care for. At the end of 
seven years three children had come into the 



88 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

family, and the mother must attend to their many 
calls upon her time and strength. Things were 
growing complicated for her. 

Yet for the husband there was but the necessity 
for a man's work each day, for, with the advent of 
prosperity, he had added to his working force. His 
was the business of getting money out of the farm, 
and these hired hands were profitable. Hers was 
the business of keeping the house in order, and the 
additional burdens had come so gradually that 
there was no realization of their increase. Anyway 
there was no hired help to be had, for there were no 
women to hire. Of course, it was not man's work, 
and the farmer, like the warrior of old, draws the 
line very closely in these matters. 

The conditions under which the division of labor 
in this family developed are almost universal. 
They would vary slightly on a New York dairy farm 
or on the prairies of Kansas or in the wheatfields of 
California. Yet they are the conditions of the 
average prosperous farm home. The woman's 
lot is better where there is less prosperity, and is 
quite simple where there is poverty. But the in- 
crease in the production of the farm, in its size, in 
its wealth, all tend to make the burdens heavier 
on the woman. This matter of work — toilsome, 
tedious, monotonous, never-ending work — is the 
down-crushing burden of the woman on the farm. 

Setting down the program of the woman's day at 



HELPING THE FARMER'S WIFE 80 

her duties may show her task more graphically 
than anything else. Here it is: 

From 4 to 6 a. m. — Breakfast for the men and getting them 

off to work. 
From 6 to 8 a. m. — Washing dishes and milk-buckets and 

putting away the milk. 
From 8 to 9 a. m. — Getting children off to school, churning, 

working the butter. 
From 9 to 10 a. m. — Getting in vegetables, dressing poultry 

and odd jobs. 
From 10 to 12 a. m— Getting a boiled dinner for the family 

and hired men. 
From 12 to 1 p. m. — Serving dinner and cleaning up. 
From 1 to 3 p. m. — Sweeping, cleaning house and making 

beds. 
From 3 to 4 p. m. — Ironing, scrubbing and odd jobs. 
From 4 to 5 p. m. — Gathering eggs, care of poultry. 
From 5 to 6 p. m. — Getting supper for family and hired men. 
From 6 to 7 p. m. — Serving supper and cleaning up. 
From 7 to 8 p. m. — Straining milk, washing utensils, pre- 
paring for breakfast. 
From 9 to 10 p. m. — Mending clothes for children and men 

folks. 

This practically completes the woman's eighteen- 
hour day, when there are no extras. Interspersed 
with the other tasks are those of taking care of two 
or four small children. There is often extra work, 
as the washing must be got in some place, the 
clothes of the children made, fruit in season put up, 
an extra lunch for the men in the harvest-time 
prepared, and countless other such possibilities. 
The baby may break the mother's rest in the brief 



90 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

respite of sleep. There is often illness in the 
family, and the burden falls on her. The illnesses 
peculiar to women sap her strength, and the bearing 
of children undermines it. 

Yet the husband, with his man's strength and 
none of these drains upon it, does not realize that 
she is doing more than her share. 

Her tasks must be performed 365 days in the 
year. The family and the hired men must be fed 
on Sunday and holidays. There is no variety in 
the work, as there is with that of the men outside, 
with the change of seasons. It is the same endless 
monotony, the same tasks to be done in the same 
way. Even the boasted health opportunity of the 
country is denied her. There is no running water 
in the house and no sanitation. The refuse decays 
on or near the premises, and the wife lives al- 
ways among its odors. 

Another of the current mistakes about farm life 
is the belief that it is far healthier than that in the 
cities. It is healthy only in proportion to the 
number of hours that are spent in the fields away 
from the house. The farmhouse is a breeder of 
disease. Dr. Stiles, of the Public Health and Ma- 
rine Hospital Service, has just made an exhaustive 
study of rural conditions in the South and reports 
that there are 5,000,000 farm people in that sec- 
tion who are physical wrecks from disease caused 
by a lack of sanitation. 

As a general rule, there are no women who can be 



HELPING THE FARMER'S WIFE 91 

employed for work in farmhouses. Who ever heard 
of a farmer who would pay a girl more than three 
dollars a week? His mind is made up to the 
effect that she is worth no more, and he will pay no 
more. Who ever knew of a girl who would put up 
with the monotony and isolation and long hours of 
farm work for three dollars a week when she could 
get six dollars for the asking in town, for less work, 
where she may have abundance of opportunity for 
association with her kind? 

Then there is a sentiment back of it which the 
women themselves hold and which militates against 
them. Their mothers ahead of them have handled 
the tasks of the home, and they are sacred to 
the wife. She feels that they are hers alone and 
rather resents the presence of a hired woman in the 
house. The farmer girls who hire out are young 
and strong and buxom, while the wife is thin and 
worn and unattractive. An instinct forbids the 
presence of the other woman in the house. 

In addition to these naturally accumulating hard- 
ships on the farm woman, there are peculiar charac- 
teristics of the farmer himself that greatly accen- 
tuate them. As has already been seen, he is 
averse to turning his hand to anything in the house. 
In the pioneer days the line was closely drawn be- 
tween man's and woman's labor. Farther back than 
that there was the division of the work into that 
which was a woman's, and not befitting a man to 
set his hand to. The American Indian will not 



92 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

touch squaw's work. It is a savage idea and a 
survival of savagery. It does not hold in a scale 
of living that is a little ahead of the home life of the 
farmer. The clerk in a store will sweep the flat for 
his wife and dry the dishes after supper, that they 
may have an hour together. So will the office or 
professional man who sees his wife overburdened. 
These men spend the holidays and Sundays fixing 
up conveniences about the house. But not the 
farmer. It would be unbecoming to the dignity of 
his manhood! There are exceptions, of course; 
but the rule holds with the great majority, and exists 
as a simple fact. The same general condition holds 
with the hired men, yet I have seen one of these 
who could feel the great weariness of the farmer's 
wife and who would perform tasks to relieve 
her. The gratitude she showed this man was 
pathetic. 

But the greatest of the shortcomings of the farmer 
lies in the fact that he provides his wife with nothing 
to make her house more homelike or to lighten her 
labor. It is fruitless to deny the fact that no thought 
is taken of the improvement of the farm house. 
When the farmer and his wife started in with noth- 
ing in the early days the all-absorbing thought was 
the getting of money out of the farm. To do this 
was the dominating idea ever in the man's mind. 
There were few conveniences in the house or in the 
field. The farmer found, however, that the net out- 
put of the farm would be increased by the purchase 



HELPING THE FARMER'S WIFE 93 

of the best machinery. This machinery was in- 
stalled, and paid for itself many times over. The 
policy was continued, and soon there were wagons 
and mowing-machines and gang-plows and thrash- 
ing-machines. The principle did not apply to the 
house. It was not obvious that the installation of a 
modern range would increase the output of the farm, 
nor would running water in the kitchen. 

There were other reasons for the lack of these 
things. Life on the farm is isolated. The fathers 
of the farmers were farmers, and their mothers were 
farmers' wives. There were no conveniences in 
their homes nor in the homes of their neighbors. 
There is an unfamiliarity with their very existence 
that rather blocks their introduction. 

The farmer has a greater number of virtues than 
any other man in the country, but he has his own 
peculiar faults. The tendency to extol him as the 
mainstay of the nation and possessor of all the 
virtues in the decalogue has somewhat spoiled him. 
The facts are that he has a few very glaring short- 
comings. He is sensitive of criticism, and could 
readily be broken of them if there were a way to 
get at him. He should be reminded of his short- 
comings in no uncertain terms. He should be slapped 
in the face with them, should be insulted and made 
mad about them. In this way he would finally be 
brought to realize them and to mend his ways. He 
does not now appreciate the fact that he is not doing 
the right thing by his women, 



94 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

There are some hundreds of thousands of farmers 
in the United States to-day who are working their 
wives into their graves before their time. An 
investigator, for instance, went out from St. Louis 
into the regions of the dairy-farms. Sanitary regu- 
lations in this section enforce a high degree of clean- 
liness. The milkers wear white-duck suits. The 
burden of maintaining this cleanliness falls upon 
the women. This investigator traveled for fifteen 
miles along a road lined with dairy-farms, stopping 
at every house and talking with the people. In that 
distance he did not find a family in which there was 
not a stepmother. The conclusion he drew was 
that one generation of women had been worked to 
death. 

There is murder being done here. It may be in 
the conditions, but the husbands are responsible 
for those conditions and are offering up their wives 
on the altar of avarice. They are ignorant of what 
they do, but there is no excuse for their ignorance. 
The horror of it is not confined to the dairy-farms, 
but goes on throughout the land. 

If every farmer in the United States could be got 
by the ears and made to look his wife over with the 
same judgment and discretion as he does his horses 
and cows, there would be the greatest revolution in 
conditions that the country has ever known. When 
a horse loses flesh, goes off its feed, grows gaunt, 
hangs down its head and drags its feet, its case is 
immediately looked into. It receives the treatment 



HELPING THE FARMER'S WIFE 95 

it requires, and usually goes into the back pasture 
where the grass is tall, and does no work until its 
strength and health are restored. When the farmer's 
wife shows the same symptoms nothing is done for 
her, and she continues her monotonous drudge of 
seventeen hours' work a day until she drops. Let 
every farmer compare the physical condition of his 
wife with that of the business man's wife of the 
same age, and, if she is not as strong and young 
as the latter, let him lay the blame at his own 
door. 

There is a strange land-mania that possesses great 
numbers of farmers and is responsible for many of 
the hardships that they force upon their families. 
When the federal Country Life Commission, some 
years ago, went on a tour and listened to criticisms 
from all classes of people, from coast to coast, they 
heard first-hand stories of these tragedies. 

So many, in fact, spoke of this all-consuming 
passion for more land on the part of the farmer that 
the Commission is almost convinced that it is a 
class characteristic. One Southern woman told 
simply the story of the price her husband had paid 
for his mania. They had started life well-to-do with 
a two-hundred-and-forty-acre farm. But the land- 
lust seized the husband when the first paying crop 
was harvested, and he acquired an adj oining twenty 
acres at a bargain. He had worked like a demon, 
lived frugally, refused to improve the home or 
educate the children. There was the striving for 



96 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

greater crops and more land. The two girls and one 
son grew to maturity in the frenzy of this struggle. 
One of the girls finally ran away to escape it, and 
afterward wrote her father taunting him with the 
fact that he had driven her to a life of immorality. 
The second girl sickened and died from the unsani- 
tary conditions of the home. The boy enlisted in 
the army to escape and has never since been heard 
of. The land-mad farmer died on the farm in the 
presence of his old and work-worn wife, who wel- 
comed his death as the one pleasant happening in 
thirty years of married life. 

The chief mechanic in one of James J. Hill's 
railroad shops in the Northwest told another story. 
This mechanic had been the son of a poor man who 
had come to Kansas in the early days. The father 
had filed upon his quarter-section of land and had 
improved it. His specialty was cattle-raising, and 
the herds ranged on government land adjoining that 
which he owned. The mechanic and his sister 
herded them. 

One day the children found two stray yearlings 
on the range. These were poor and worn, and had 
been dropped from some passing great herd because 
they were no longer able to travel. They were 
naturally the property of the finders if they could 
be coaxed back to life. The children succeeded 
in getting them home and showed them with great 
pride to their father. In a sudden burst of gener- 
osity and much to the surprise of the children he 



HELPING THE FARMER'S WIFE 97 

told them that since they had found the yearlings 
they might have them for their very own. 

In the days and months that followed, the two 
strays were led to the best grazing and for three 
years were guarded with such care that they became 
the pride of the herd. When the time finally came 
to market the prime steers the children saw them 
loaded on the train for Chicago. In a week their 
father returned with the profits of his sales. They 
asked of the money he had got for the prize steers 
and when he was going to give it to them. He said 
it had all been a joke, and that there was no money 
for them. 

Two childish hearts were broken by that joke. 
The next freight-train for the West carried the 
boy away. Later the girl succeeded in getting to 
Topeka, and by some happy chance got into a 
school there. So anxious was she to make up the 
time that she had lost that she over studied, went 
into brain fever and died. 

The Commission heard many of these stories of 
the shortcomings of the farmer with relation to 
his family and nearly always it heard the com- 
plaint of the drudgery, the monotony, and the iso- 
lation of the woman on the farm, and the claim 
that, as a class, she was not getting her share in the 
prosperity. There were great numbers of women 
who told of the conveniences of their farm homes 
and of the pleasure of them, but these always 
confessed that they were in the minority. 



98 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

One high-class and competent woman of this 
group living in Illinois, told of the building up of the 
farm home and the great number of conveniences 
and of the pleasure in it. She had been a school 
teacher before she became a farmer's wife. One 
of the commissioners asked her how it happened 
that she had such a successful farm home and how 
she managed to get so much more in the way of 
conveniences than her sisters. 

"I knew what was due me and stipulated these 
things to my husband before I married him/' she 
said. "They were in the contract." 

This hint may be of value to girls all over the 
country to whom men on the farm are proposing. 

There is still one picture needed to complete the 
rounding out of the life-story of the farmer's wife. 
She should be seen on a holiday. This holiday is 
Saturday afternoon, when she goes to town with 
her husband. It has been a month since she has 
been away from the farm, and she hastens through 
the noonday meal with no little excitement. She 
is aware of the fact that she is not overattractive 
in her plain, home-made calico dress entirely devoid 
of feminine adornment, and the baby is fretful, 
and the three-year-old chafes in his starched waist, 
and the five-year-old is in danger of falling out of 
the back of the wagon, but she is off to town, and 
this is the one break in the monotony she ever 
knows. 

The streets are crowded on Saturday, for the 



HELPING THE FARMER'S WIFE 99 

neighbors have all come in. So is the general store 
at which they trade. She goes to this store first, 
accompanied by her husband. They examine the 
stock and make various and sundry purchases. 
The husband is somewhat impatient, for the street- 
corner is the club, and all the men of his kind are 
there and full of talk of the things that are mutually 
interesting to them. But of course he carries the 
purse, and must be present while the purchases are 
being made and must pay for them. His wife is 
hurried through and he is emancipated. 

When he is gone she remains in the store, as there 
is no other place more fitting for her to go. Finally, 
she realizes that the clerks are somewhat annoyed 
by her presence, despite the fact that her husband 
is a well-to-do farmer and a good customer. She 
goes out and drags the children down the main 
street, but they are fretful and sticky with 
candy, and she decides to take them back to the 
wagon. 

Here she is more at her ease, and here she spends 
the rest of the day. The horses are tied to a long 
rack and switch flies amid hundreds of their kind, 
pull the wagon back and forth until i,t clamps and 
runs into another wagon, or rub their bridles off in 
their restlessness. There is a lot to worry about 
even if the children do not fret and are safe from 
accident among the wagons. The husband should 
have been ready to start home by four o'clock, but 
it is approaching election time and he is interested 



100 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

in " saving the country," but she sees no humor in 
the thought. She is fearful lest the old speckled hen 
will not get safely to roost with her new brood of 
chickens. But Farmer Brown comes by with a 
cheerful word, and she is interested in the finery of 
the Jones girls who are just unhitching their new 
buggy from the rack, and there is the deputy- 
sheriff dozing in the shade of the court-house, and 
the grocery-wagons are rattling by and everything 
goes merrily, and the wait is not so long, after all, 
for husband shows up at six- thirty and they are off 
for home. 

The unpopularity of farm life has grown as the 
position of the farmer's wife has become more 
difficult. 

The result of this making so hard the woman's 
lot on the farm is proving to be the ruin of that great, 
basic industry. Even where she knows nothing 
better, where none of her sisters or friends 
married into a different life, there is a deep, unend- 
ing hatred for the career she leads. It fills her breast 
before her children are born, and it enters into the 
viewpoint of things that these children get from her 
from babyhood up. The rising generations are 
starting in by hating farm life, and the great effort 
is to get away from the farm. Those with any 
ability succeed in doing so, and only the inefficient 
are left to improve the native conditions. 

And it could all be remedied. There are most 
satisfactory homes in every farming community 



HELPING THE FARMER'S WIFE 101 

in the land where the wives lead lives of thrift and 
industry among conditions that are as favorable or 
more so than those of their sisters in the cities. 
A kitchen can be arranged as well in the country as 
in the city and can be furnished with as many 
labor-saving devices. Every owner or renter of 
real estate in the city pays for the installation of 
running water in the house because health regula- 
tions force him to it. Yet the well-to-do farmer, 
who is much more prosperous than the average city 
dweller, says he cannot afford ' it, and his wife 
draws the water from the well, his house is unsani- 
tary, the children die of typhoid and a bath is 
unknown. 

The Department of Agriculture is the chief federal 
agency engaged in the task of improving the condi- 
tion of the woman on the farm. Through that 
Department Uncle Sam is attempting to gain a com- 
plete understanding of the necessities in the case and 
to follow the long road which will lead to a general 
reform. 

In this campaign a knowledge of the exact facts 
is necessary. All manner of method has been used 
in getting these facts. One system was the writing 
of 50,000 letters to individual farm women. An- 
other was to send individual observers into a given 
section and have the households examined as an 
efficiency expert would look into the detail of a 
business. The great task of rural organization has 
been taken up and a bureau established for its 



102 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

study. This bureau is interested particularly in 
rural neighborhoods with relation to their community 
life. 

Exhaustive studies have been made of very 
particular things, such as the arrangement of a farm 
kitchen, the installation of running water into the 
farm house, the nutritive values of farm foods, 
the proper canning of fruit on the farm. Upon 
these and many other definite subjects bulletins 
have been issued that show in detail just how these 
advances may be made. The facts are shown as to 
the saving in labor that may be brought about 
through the use of a tireless cooker. The plans for a 
community laundry operated by the waste steam 
from the creamery to which many farms send a wagon 
every day, are definitely laid down. Exhaustive 
information on subjects too numerous to enumerate 
is being compiled. 

Getting this information to the farm house is 
more difficult than getting the information. Find- 
ings of the government experts are first issued in 
bulletin form. These bulletins are furnished with- 
out charge to any farmer in the nation who asks for 
them. Hundreds of thousands of lists of publica- 
tions are sent out every month with invitations to 
order those in which the individual feels especial 
interest. 

The purport of all these bulletins is prepared for 
use by all sorts of publications and furnished to them 
free of charge. So does it reach a very large per 



HELPING THE FARMER'S WIPE 103 

cent, of the reading public. All such information is 
given to the farm demonstration agents scattered 
throughout the country and to the many county 
agents. These men are expert in getting the infor- 
mation home to the farmer. The state agricultural 
colleges and all the state machinery that radiates 
from them is active in the campaign to improve 
country life through getting this information home 
to the farmer. Eventually it finds its way to the 
rural agricultural school, to the home reading club, 
to whatever local organization exists. 

Slowly this campaign of education is breaking the 
ties that bind the farm woman. Slowly the farmer 
is being awakened to his neglect of his wife. Slowly 
he is seeing that family health and efficiency are so 
increased by bringing the home up to the standard 
that he cannot afford to live as of old. 

Already is the change so thoroughly brought 
about in some communities that a charge such as is 
made here will be met with indignant denial. 
The government knows full well that these accusa- 
tions do not apply to all farm communities. But it 
has studied the farmer in all his haunts and has 
tabulated him. It knows him from coast to coast 
and from Canada to Mexico. The member of the 
individual farm community where such conditions 
do not exist may hold that the farmer is here done a 
great injustice, but he knows only local conditions. 
The government knows that the masses of men on 
the farms have not yet been reached. In its 



104 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

endeavor to make the lives of all its citizens as 
happy as conditions will allow, it is taking particular 
notice of the woman on the farm, appreciating always 
that she is one of its very greatest assets. 



CHAPTER VIII 

EEJUVENATING PORTO RICO 

IN Porto Rico, where tragedy has stalked through 
centuries in a land of sunshine, where famine 
has been constantly abroad despite a wealth of 
productiveness that required but an invitation to 
the soil, where the shadow of the hand of tyranny 
has brought gloom to the descendants of a race 
planted here in the time of its world dominance, 
there has come a change. 

The United States as foster parent of this much 
abused waif of the mid-Atlantic has devoted a 
decade and a half to the training of its people. 
Uncle Sam has waved his magic wand and there 
has been a transformation. Idle lands have de- 
veloped into fertile fields. The markets of the 
United States have been opened wide to the produce 
of the little island garden and a commerce ten times 
as great as ever known before has resulted. The 
good surgeons of the American army have assailed 
the disease demon that was throttling the whole 
people and a rejuvenated race has resulted. The 
word has gone forth to the occupant of the lonely 
cabin on the hillside to raise his head and look the 
whole world in the face as a destiny-defying man of 
the West should, and the message is being heard. 
These good things are coming to that portion of 

105 



106 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

the soil of the United States that contains the 
densest population of them all. Porto Rico, terri- 
tory of Uncle Sam since 1898, has a population of 

310 people to the square mile. With the single 
exception of small areas of the mill districts of New 
England there are no other American communities 
so densely populated. In the little island there are 
1,120,000 people. It is more densely inhabited than 
is France with 188 people to the square mile, 
Germany with 280, or China with 266. Its popula- 
tion is about equal in density to that of Japan with 

311 to the mile and a little less than that of England, 
Scotland, or Ireland with 346. 

Thus more than a million people for whom the 
United States has assumed responsibility is hud- 
dled together on an island that is but 100 miles 
long and forty miles wide. In square miles the 
island is less than half the size of the State of 
Massachusetts. Yet its population is about equal 
to that of Alaska, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, 
Wyoming and the District of Columbia combined. 
It is fairly aswarm with human beings. Numeric- 
ally it is of much greater weight than vast expanses 
of our native soil that are reckoned as of huge 
importance in making up a nation. 

This population is different from that of the 
densely inhabited parts of continental United States 
in that it is distributed mostly throughout the 
country districts. Only one-fourth of the people 
live in the towns while three-fourths reside on the land 



REJUVENATING PORTO RICO 107 

and depend upon agriculture for a livelihood — a 
condition that makes it more readily possible to turn 
all these people into producers of wealth. 

Since these residents of the West Indies have be- 
come a part and parcel of the citizenship that goes 
to make up the composite American, it is interesting 
to take note of the strains of blood that flow in their 
veins. Those who were born under the flag ask 
what manner of man is this typical American-Porto- 
Rican. 

Probably the current idea is that the old Carib 
blood that was native to the island still courses in 
the veins of the present residents. This is true to 
a very limited extent. It was Ponce de Leon 
who first brought a Spanish force to the island and 
conquered its native people. Leon led this inva- 
sion in 1508 and the island was made a Spanish 
colony before any settlement was ever planted in 
continental United States. This adventurer had 
been a sailor before the mast with Columbus and 
with the great discoverer had anchored in Porto 
Rican waters in 1493, when Europeans paid a sec- 
ond visit to the land of the West. It was in 
Porto Rico also that Ponce de Leon got his inspira- 
tion for his search for the Fountain of Youth which 
led to his discovery of Florida, and the settlement 
of St. Augustine, the first on the American main- 
land. So, with the acquisition does the Florida 
town give over the palm of being the oldest 
American settlement. It was from this island also 



108 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

that Cortez and his command of adventurers set 
out to conquer Mexico and wrote the most romantic 
and dramatic chapter in the history of the New 
World. 

At the time of this first occupation by the Spanish 
there were various reports of the number of inhabi- 
tants. The population was dense and estimates 
were given ranging from 100,000 to 600,000. The 
Spaniards were in search of gold and the natives had 
shown them nuggets. The Caribs were enslaved 
and driven to the search of the precious metal. 
Not much of it was found and vengeance for the 
disappointment was visited upon the natives. Here 
is a dark page in the history of Porto Rico which is 
not recorded. There is but the report of men who 
visited the land fifty years later, one of whom 
estimates the total population, including the 
Spaniards, at 60,000, and another who makes the 
statement that there were not a hundred Caribs 
left on the islands. Pretty certain it is that the 
Spaniards came near exterminating the native 
race during that first five decades and that there 
is not much Carib blood in the present inhabi- 
tants. It is probably as well that the detail of 
that fifty years is not written. 

The first settlers of Porto Rico were adventurers 
seeking wealth. Soon the fleets of Spain became 
most frequent in their voyages to the West. All of 
these made their first stop in the New World at 
Porto Rico. Always there were hordes of stow- 



REJUVENATING PORTO RICO 109 

aways hoping for wealth and these were put ashore 
on the island. From the fleet there were great 
numbers of deserters. Criminals sentenced to the 
Porto Rican galleys ended their lives there and their 
blood entered into the whole. The strong military 
garrison that was kept in the island for centuries 
contributed its part to the people. Blue-blooded 
Spanish grandees settled there on large estates. 
The sons of Spanish office-holders remained there 
and reared families. 

So it comes to pass that Porto Ricans of to-day 
are almost entirely of Spanish descent. The great 
mass of them are of that adventurous blood, the 
rabble of gold seekers and ne'er-do- wells, that cast 
their lots into the west. This blood is slightly 
diluted on the one side by that of the Spanish ruling 
class and on the other by the Carib. Aside from 
which there is one-third of the whole which is blood 
of the black from Africa, the descendants of whom 
live around the coast and devote themselves largely 
to the cultivation of cane. 

But Uncle Sam found no swashbuckling adven- 
turers cavorting about the island when he took pos- 
session of Porto Rico. The descendants of the early 
adventurers were found huddled on the hillsides, 
large families in single-roomed shacks which con- 
tained not a single stick of furniture. One or two 
cheap pieces of cloth hid their nakedness. They 
were a people without shoes, almost without food. 
Unsanitary living had undermined their physiques. 



110 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

Centuries of oppression had broken their spirits. 
They saw visions of no condition that was different 
from that to which they had been born. A great 
inaction seemed to have settled down upon them. 
They were lost to the progress of the world. 

Aside from the inaction that comes from a hope- 
less poverty and insufficient nourishment there was 
a great plague that perennially stalked about the 
land and palsied the inhabitants though they knew 
it not. This invisible specter with which even the 
scientists of the progressive nations were then un- 
acquainted, poisoned the bodies of the men of the 
soil until their steps lagged, their energy was all 
gone, and they could but sit in the sun as the years 
passed and call down upon themselves condemna- 
tion for their apparent laziness. 

But a young surgeon of the army, Major Bailey 
K. Ashford by name, discovered that the soil of 
the land harbored a microscopic creature that was 
a little later found throughout the Southern States 
of America and came to be known as the hookworm 
and which had been casting the same pall of inaction 
over the poor whites of that region. Since 1910, 
190,000 sufferers of this disease have been treated 
and 60,000 have been pronounced cured. 

These were the masses. Above them the govern- 
ing class, a few thousand men who had stood for the 
regime of old Spain, had been made prosperous 
through office-holding or had gained much land 
through grants. These men had the Spanish view- 



REJUVENATING PORTO RICO 111 

point in governmental affairs. This view, as dem- 
onstrated in scores of communities where the 
Spanish hand has been shown, is the exploitation of 
the masses for the benefit of the governing class. 
The welfare of the masses is not considered as 
against the enrichment of the few. 

Even the ruling class in Porto Rico was compara- 
tively without ambition. The individual who 
owned some thousands of acres of land and lived in 
one of the towns, was contented with two or three 
thousand dollars a year as an income. He did noth- 
ing toward the development of his estate beyond the 
yield of this amount. The thousands of men who 
might have been productive tenants were therefore 
deprived of this opportunity for creating wealth. 
There was the pall of an age-long stagnation that 
had settled down upon the land. 

Yet the representatives of the United States 
government looked over the brand new possession 
and saw that the land was fair, that nature responded 
bounteously to but a little labor, that fortune 
awaited the cultivator of large areas, that all that 
might be grown could be taken by the cheapest sort 
of transportation to the best market in all the world, 
for the island was in the very front door of New 
York City. 

It was found that the owners of a few plantations 
were making sugar with crude machinery. Even in 
1901 there were but 70,000 tons produced. The 
production grew in a decade to 400,000 tons. The 



112 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

output of cigars from Porto Rico at the end of a 
decade and a half was fourteen times as great as it 
was at the beginning. The mountains of Porto 
Rico have been found to produce such coffee as can 
be grown in but a few localities in the world, for 
high-grade coffee is produced only at elevations 
around 2,000 feet and its quality can not be equalled 
by the product of such great competitors as Brazil, 
where it grows in the lowlands. Orange, lemon, and 
grape-fruit orchards were planted and pineapple 
fields set to grow. All this sort of produce has been 
shipped into New York and brings top prices. 

The United States realized that the first need of 
its newly acquired people was a bit of prosperity. 
It encouraged all the industries that promised 
immediate returns. The result is to-day that Porto 
Rico has five times as much produce on the market 
as it had in 1901 and that five times as much money 
is consequently going to the island to pay for that 
produce. Of this money, the individual Porto 
Rican is getting his share. Where wages were 
thirty-five cents a day in the beginning they are now 
a dollar. The result may be definitely shown by a 
statement of the fact that in a little more than a 
decade the natives were transformed from a bare- 
foot people to a shoe-wearing people. 

Hardly had he arrived in Porto Rico when Uncle 
Sam got busy on his one great specialty — education. 
With that old gentleman's penchant for governing 
all peoples for their own development rather than 



REJUVENATING PORTO RICO 113 

for profit to himself, he began to look into the school 
question. He found that 80 per cent, of the peo- 
ple were illiterate. There were but 20,000 out of 
the 250,000 children of the island in school. There 
was but one building in all the land that was owned 
by the school system. The pupils were almost en- 
tirely without books and the teachers were largely 
pensioners. 

In place of this to-day there are 1,180 school 
buildings scattered from one end of the island to the 
other. This means that there is one to every three 
square miles. There are 2,500 capable teachers who 
are inculcating English and industrial learning into 
these youngsters. There are 161,000 little natives 
attending. There are night schools to the number 
of 250 and more than 10,000 grown folks are taking 
advantage of them. The spirit of the thing has got 
hold of the people and the native legislature is 
steadily increasing appropriations for schools. 

The American idea of advancing a people to a 
higher plane of living is to create a want within the 
breasts of that people. If it can be caused to want 
any given thing badly enough, it will find a way of 
acquiring that thing. So Uncle Sam figures that 
by educating these youngsters, he will create within 
them a desire for better living. He tries to plant 
always in their minds the advisability of the owner- 
ship of a bit of land, the benefits of work, the pos- 
sibilities of farming, the need of participation in 
government. All these come with the attendance of 



114 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

the American school and the next generation is ex- 
pected to rise up and assert itself as did its adven- 
turous ancestry but along the more wholesome lines 
of the Anglo-Saxon Republican. 

The United States has had a difficult task in 
getting Porto Ricans to govern themselves in the 
light of the American idea. The Porto Rican of the 
upper class, when he speaks of popular government, 
means government by his class. He never considers 
the masses. They are chattels. It requires much 
repetition before he gets the idea of these men 
having a voice in government equal to his own. 

On the other hand, the peon of Porto Rico, having 
always been a practical chattel of some land- 
owner, can not grasp the idea that he is to have 
anything to do with the government. He has never 
had any voice, has never expected any. He is 
hard to awaken. 

The administration of Porto Rico has been 
wrestling with these two difficulties. The American 
governors have been lecturing the upper class and 
educating the lower class. The assembly is elec- 
tive and the people are allowed to vote. There has 
developed a new party which sees the vision and is 
grasping the idea of American government. There is 
still the old party that can see nothing but themselves 
as the dominating influence. Failing to see the new 
light this party is going down to defeat. 

The government of the island is administered 
through the War Department and its Bureau of 



REJUVENATING PORTO RICO 115 

Insular Affairs. The officials of importance are ap- 
pointive and are named by the President. They 
consist of the Governor and the heads of the va- 
rious departments who likewise sit as the upper leg- 
islative body. As rapidly as possible these posts 
will be given over to Porto Ricans, as these men 
have been found first-class executives when there 
is a superior to keep them on the track which 
American policy dictates. 

It is the easiest sort of four days' journey by 
steamer from New York to Porto Rico, where the 
breezes are like April throughout the winter months 
and the fruit of the tropics may be plucked ripen- 
ing from the trees. From New York, 1,400 miles 
south; from Florida, 400 miles east; it lies far out in 
the Atlantic, an emerald in the vast blue. 

Regardless of what it may have to offer to the 
merchant, the planter, and the investor, two natural 
conditions — wonderful scenery and an incomparably 
delightful climate — furnish sufficient attractions to 
stimulate the most travel-sated tourists into experi- 
encing a new zest in life. One of the pirate haunts 
of the olden days and the refuge of treasure-laden 
galleons fleeing from marauding English admirals 
who prowled the " Spanish main" centuries ago, 
Porto Rico has plenty to offer to those who seek the 
quaint and the picturesque. 

To the traveler to whom the romance of four 
centuries past appeals, San Juan and other cities 
in Porto Rico are as alluring and far more satisfying 



116 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

than were the prospects of adventure and unlimited 
wealth to Columbus and his followers, who did not 
find the gold they sought, but found a fair world for 
posterity. 

When St. Augustine was first settled, in the city 
of San Juan, then known as the "City of Porto 
Rico," had been erected buildings and fortifications 
that are still standing. The first hundred years of 
San Juan's existence had passed before Jamestown 
came into being, and Hudson sailed up the river 
which bears his name. Its second century had 
commenced when the Dutch colonized New Amster- 
dam, and before the Pilgrims had disembarked from 
the Mayflower. 

More than 1,500 miles of magnificent automobile 
roads make a visit to the island all the more alluring 
to the motorist, much of this having been constructed 
by the Spaniards, who, whatever their faults, build 
military roads that are the envy of the world. 

There is an additional charm of a people foreign 
by nature, speaking a foreign language, yet ever 
smiling and courteous — a peaceful, happy, lovable 
people, the mingling with which brings the right 
feeling into the heart. 

Benevolent Uncle Sam is going to work out a 
very happy future for these long-oppressed people 
and incidentally develop for himself one of the 
most productive little territories in the world. 
There are those who maintain that the removal of 
the duty from sugar will ruin Porto Rico. Those 



REJUVENATING PORTO RICO 117 

who know the island best hold that its future should 
not rest with sugar and that in the end the less 
sugar grown the better. Yet there is sure to be 
many a plantation that will survive the tariff. 

This island should be given almost exclusively to 
intensive farming. The climate is such that garden 
truck can be planted so it will come to market during 
any week of the year and should therefore be 
matured at the season when the States are not 
producing. Bundled aboard ship it can be quickly 
put into New York where the market is unlimited. 
The land of Porto Rico is intensely fertile and there 
are so many people to live by the soil that this 
method of farming which brings the largest return 
and gives employment to the greatest number 
should be followed. 

And the people will welcome the opportunity for 
this sort of farming. They know nothing of it, 
but they are willing to work and are natural agri- 
culturists. The Department of Agriculture has an 
experiment station in Porto Rico which is demon- 
strating many possibilities in the way of crops. 
Unfortunately, its directors are making the common 
mistake of scientific men and merely establishing 
technical facts without providing a way of getting 
these facts to the people who should be using them. 

But a vast advance has been made already and the 
task of converting 1,120,000 tyranny-ridden de- 
scendants of the Spanish buccaneers into prosperous 
and productive Americans is well on its way. 



CHAPTER IX 

REMAKING THE "POOR WHITES" 

IN the South, Aladdin is rubbing his lamp. Men 
are being made over. The great region between 
the Potomac and the Rio Grande is beginning 
again to bloom. 

The federal government, ever watchful of the 
well-being of its citizens, found here 5,000,000 people 
against whom conditions had so conspired that they 
were the poorest of the poor, the most miserable of 
America's native born — a race unto themselves set 
apart. For a generation a way out for these men and 
women was sought until it has finally been found 
and the transformation is now on the way. 

In the South there have always been plenty of 
people of varying degrees of prosperity, just as there 
are in other communities. People in the ordinary 
lines of business prosper and live lives not unlike 
people in New York, Indiana, or Nebraska. 

On the great plantations there are people upon 
whom fortune smiles, men who till great areas 
with negro labor. Landowners of smaller estates 
farm them or rent them to tenants and are fairly 
prosperous. There is nothing in the condition of 
these to attract particular attention. 

118 



REMAKING THE "POOR WHITES" 119 

But living side by side with them is another class, 
a race unto itself, a mass of people poorer than the 
peasants of Europe or the natives of the Philippines. 
The "poor white," "the hill Billy/' " the cracker," as 
he is variously known, has been produced by the 
peculiar conditions of the South. 

Before the war these people had been poor, had 
owned no slaves, had been crowded from the 
productive lands, which were absorbed by the big 
estates, and had taken their places in the foothills 
and the mountains. They competed on poorer land 
and without machinery with the slave labor and 
cooperation of the great plantations and found it 
tragically unprofitable. The alternative was to 
hire out to the plantation owners and work side by 
side with the negroes in the field for a mere pittance, 
thus losing all social prestige. 

The passing of slavery affected these people not in 
the least. They still hired out in competition with 
the negro or worked their small farms in a desultory 
way with ever decreasing returns, drawing supplies 
from the country store, for which the crop was 
pledged and promptly turned over at maturity. 

For a hundred years the song of cotton-fields has 
been: "Pd rather be a nigger than a poor white 
man." 

These people have done these same things so long 
that no other possibility occurs to them. A family 
of ten fives in a two-room house surrounded by a rail 
fence. The water for family consumption is brought 



120 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

200 yards from a spring branch. There are no 
outbuildings, no barn, no cow, hogs, chickens, 
no garden. The family and its predecessors have 
lived here for a hundred years, and the refuse from 
the household has been deposited about the premises. 
The sanitary conditions are frightful. 

Dr. Charles Waddell Stiles, of the Public Health 
and Marine Hospital Service, discovered the fact 
that practically all these people are affected by the 
hookworm disease, occasioned by this lack of 
sanitation, for the hookworm thrives in this polluted 
soil. Their blood shows a vitality as low as 30 
per cent, of the normal and rarely more than 70 
per cent. They are almost entirely without 
education. 

The poor whites have crept west into Louisiana, 
Arkansas, and Texas, carrying their manner of life 
with them, thus increasing the magnitude of the 
problem. They are a dead weight about the necks 
of ten States, a responsibility that the national 
government had until recently sidestepped, a great 
black blot on the book of the nation. 

Dr. S. A. Knapp was, a generation ago, instructor 
of agriculture in the Iowa State College, later its 
president, and still later manager of a large planta- 
tion in Louisiana. Dr. Knapp spent twenty years 
in the South, and in that time increased the value 
of the land under his care from nothing to $50 
an acre. In 1904 Secretary Wilson of the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, realizing the needs of the 



REMAKING THE " POOR WHITES " 121 

South, called upon Dr. Knapp to wrestle with the 
great problem particularly with reference to the poor 
whites. 

Dr. Knapp appreciated the task and its possi- 
bilities. He knew scientific farming and he knew the 
hearts of the poor whites. He saw the great vision 
of the way out and he knew the difficulties that 
beset it, for these people had no eyes for visions, 
were without hope, or ambition. They knew only 
their own squalor and would accept the word of no 
man that there was any other possibility. 

A farmer asked Dr. Knapp one day if he believed 
in fertilizer. He replied, "Yes, half of it on the 
land and half on the man." 

An agent of the German foreign office asked 
his advice as to how to improve the natives of the 
African colonies. 

"What do they want most?" he asked. 

"They are entirely satisfied. They want noth- 
ing," was the reply. 

Then develop a want," answered Dr. Knapp. 

No matter what the want is, so there is one. Gew- 
gaws are as good as anything else. A race or an 
individual without a desire can not be reached nor 
made anything of. When a want is aroused there 
is a chance to accomplish good. The important 
thing and the foundation of all development is to 
want something." 

This creation of a desire was one of the great 
problems in dealing with the poor whites in the South. 



tc 
it 



122 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

They did not realize that there was anything within 
their reach worth while. They were beyond having 
a want. 

One of them when asked why he did not try to 
get hold of some land for himself, replied: 

"Paw always hired out, and so did grandpaw, so 
I reckon that's good enough for me." 

There had been theorists ahead of Dr. Knapp 
who fancied the question might be solved in various 
ways. On St. Helena Island, off the coast of South 
Carolina, for instance, there is a settlement 5,000 
strong where the school idea has been tried. 

These people did not care much for the school and 
soon left. 

So, after passing up many theories, Dr. Knapp 
settled upon the practical problem of creating in the 
hearts of these people a want. The thing that was 
vital to them was the discovery of the scientists that 
the lands upon which they lived contained the ele- 
ments of plenty and prosperity and that they could 
get at these. They could not appreciate this when 
told. They could not realize it when shown. The 
fact was not personal to them. 

These people were slaves to the credit system. 
Their per capita production was low. In Florida 
the average income of the worker on the farm was 
$119 a year as opposed to $755 in North Dakota. 
On St. Helena Island the average family did not 
see $30 a year. Everything eaten was bought from 
the store that " carried" the farmer while he made 



REMAKING THE " POOR WHITES " 123 

his crop. The prices paid were excessive. The crop 
was eaten up before it was harvested. The methods 
of farming were so poor that there was apparently 
no possibility of bettering this condition. 

The need was to get away from the credit system 
and to raise better crops. 

To accomplish the first, it was necessary to pro- 
duce what the family ate. This must be done with- 
out expense, for there was no money with which to 
buy. A garden, a few chickens and hogs are in- 
expensive and come near solving this problem. 
These are the things for which a want should be 
created, and to them should be added a small area 
better farmed than of old. Eventually the desires 
for a cow and horses should be added. 

How was this desire to be created? How was the 
end to be accomplished? 

This was the practical question that Dr. Knapp 
undertook to solve in thousands of communities and 
on hundreds of thousands of farms in the South. 

You can't tell these people how to live differently, 
nor can you show them except in certain ways. If 
you or I went among them and lived as they should, 
the lesson would never go home. We are not one 
of them, and what we do they may not realize as 
possible for them. These people must themselves 
be guided in doing this thing, and this was no easy 
task. 

"When an individual can not be persuaded to 
farm as he is advised," said Dr. Knapp, "he must be 



124 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

induced to do so by some hook or crook. He him- 
self must grow a garden about his house ; raise 
chickens, feed some hogs, cultivate a crop under 
instructions. He must himself perform the 
miracle." 

With the reaping of that first harvest under in- 
structions, a harvest which is three times as great 
as any he has ever before grown, he becomes a 
changed man, for he knows what he can do. The 
burden of generations is lifted from him, and for the 
first time he knows the feeling of hope and of ambi- 
tion. He has tasted of success and it is sweet to the 
tongue. 

He has awakened and will shout the secret from 
the housetops. This one man becomes the demon- 
strator under the direction of the Department of 
Agriculture. He has been selected in the first place 
because of suspected latent possibilities. After the 
first year he follows instructions eagerly and works 
ceaselessly. His neighbors have seen his success 
and it has impressed them deeply, for he is in 
no way different from them. 

The second year his fence bears a placard which 
announces that his is a demonstration farm of the 
government. He receives bulletins through the 
mail. He has been selected from among them all 
and is proud of himself. 

Under the circumstances he feels that there 
should be no weeds in his fence corners, his horse 



REMAKING THE "POOR WHITES " 125 

should have better harness, his house a coat of 
whitewash. 

With the ripening of the second crop comes the 
local agent of the Department. The farmers of the 
neighborhood are called to meet at the demonstra- 
tion farm and are schooled in the manner in which 
the remarkable crop was grown. They are told in 
detail just how to go and do likewise. They buy 
seed from the demonstration farm, and are advised 
by the local agent. 

The following year, half of the farms in the neigh- 
borhood are producing these same increased crops, 
and usually in five years the whole community is 
at it. 

There is infinite detail in arousing the farmers in a 
single district. Imagine, then, the task of arousing 
them in every district in the eleven great cotton- 
producing States. Yet this is being done. 

The national government furnishes some $250,000 
a year which is augmented by about $100,000 from 
the General Education Board, and this combined 
sum was being spent by Dr. Knapp before his death, 
in this work, and is now being spent by his successors. 
The amount is small to be spread over so great a 
territory, but local authorities and individuals often 
cooperate and bear a part of the expense. 

Headquarters for this work is with the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture in Washington. There is an 
agent in each of the Southern States and under him 



126 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

a few district agents. Then come the local agents, 
400 of them in all. 

This force has succeeded in establishing 60,000 
demonstration farms such as that described. To 
these come the farmers round about, on an average 
of thirty, seeing each demonstration and learning its 
lessons. That takes the influence to 1,800,000 farms 
in a year. 

The demonstrators are attempting to arouse a 
desire in the hearts of the farmers for good horses 
and good farm implements. In fact, the practice 
is to hitch up a good team and take it about the 
country. 

Many farmers are allowed to drive it for a few 
furrows in their plowing. The advantage of the 
good team and the good plow is in this way shown 
and a desire for it on the part of the farmer is aroused. 
So with machinery. 

Another matter that these demonstrations are 
furthering in the South is that of rural education. 
There are being established rural high schools, 
entirely removed from the town and those influences 
that tend to take the farm child away from the 
farm, and surrounded by demonstration gardens. 
In these schools are taught those things that fit 
farm boys and girls to live on the farm and make that 
life worth while. 

Additional agricultural high schools and consoli- 
dated rural schools are making their appearance 



REMAKING THE " POOR WHITES " 127 

here and there. This condition is typical of the 
tendency in the South. 

It is planned to take the matter of demonstration 
to the home life of the farm as the idea develops. 

In each community it is planned to build a 
simple house as a farmhouse should be built, and 
fit it with the conveniences which are within the 
reach of every farmer's wife. Then the countryside 
is to be invited to inspect it. 

It is a great idea and it is working the miracle. 
Any man in the South who is not getting the benefit 
of the work may be placed in line for it by merely 
writing to the Department of Agriculture and stat- 
ing his case. There may be a local agent and a 
demonstration farm near him. 

Perhaps he may be needed to start a demonstra- 
tion farm in his district. Every man in the South 
has Aladdin's lamp, and should learn the manner 
of its rubbing. 



CHAPTER X 

GETTING THE LAND TO THE PEOPLE 

THE Land Office of the government is the 
greatest agency for the sale of real estate 
that has ever existed since the world began. 
It has sold, during the hundred years past, an 
amount of land which equals five-eighths of the 
area of continental United States, and comprises 
the most valuable stretch of farming land on earth. 
Another eighth it has appraised and retained for 
public purposes, such as national forests and Indian 
and military reservations. One-eighth is still public 
land and forms the stock in trade that the Land 
Office is to-day offering for sale. There is in it 
one single item of coal land appraised at $700,- 
000,000. There are oil fields, gold mines, irrigated 
homesteads, towering mountains, burning deserts. 
It has disposed of or has for sale all that lies be- 
tween the Atlantic and the Pacific except the 
lands of the thirteen original states and those of 
Texas. 

Not all the government's land business, however, 
has been on the selling end. That vast area west 
of the Ohio belonged to the Indians originally and 
was got from them with their consent in some sort 

128 



GETTING LAND TO THE PEOPLE 129 

of transaction. Under the scale of prices paid to the 
Indians the State of Kansas would be worth about 
two rifles while a rough territory like Wyoming 
would go for a mirror and a string of beads. All the 
territory was, however, bought. 

When the government bought Louisiana it paid 
3.6 cents an acre. The purchase price of Florida 
was 17 cents an acre, of the Gadsden purchase 34 
cents, of Alaska 2 cents. That Uncle Sam was a 
good business man is shown by the fact that he im- 
mediately proceeded to sell those lands for $1.25 an 
acre, a price that seems wondrous cheap at this 
end of the century. Alaska, bought for $7,000,000 
was thought a bad investment, but before half a 
century had passed it had produced $500,000,000 
from mines, furs, and fisheries alone. 

The first land ever sold by this government was 
auctioned off in Wall Street, New York, in 1787. 
It was at this time that a minimum of $1 an 
acre was established for all government lands and 
they were sold to the highest bidder for what- 
ever they might bring above that amount. The 
first sale of a large tract took place about this 
time when 2,000,000 acres upon which Marietta, 
Ohio, now stands, was sold. A dollar an acre was 
the price to be paid. J. C. Symmes, a speculator 
of New Jersey, was one of the first purchasers of 
land from the government and bought that tract 
upon which the city of Cincinnati was afterward 
located. 



130 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

For eighty years after the public domain was 
created it was regarded as a national asset and ex- 
ploited for the sole purpose of acquiring revenue. 
During that period all the heart of the Mississippi 
Valley was sold and settled up. From the stand- 
point of sales the banner year in the history of the 
Land Office was 1836. In that year 20,000,000 
acres were sold and $25,000,000 was the money re- 
ceived in return. Most of the lands sold in that 
year were in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, 
and Alabama. The great panic of 1837 is attributed 
very largely to the monster speculation in public 
lands that had taken place in the year that pre- 
ceded it. 

The dullest year that Uncle Sam's real estate office 
has ever known was in 1862, the bad business being 
attributed to the fact that the Civil War was then 
being fought. It was at about this time that the 
policy of selling land for the simple purpose of getting 
revenue from it was changed and the present policy 
of using it as a means of providing homes for the 
people was substituted. Since that time the govern- 
ment has accepted from settlers a residence upon 
a tract of land for a period of years in lieu of cash 
payments. Uncle Sam has been more profligate 
in bestowing his lands upon his soldiers who have 
fought his battles than in any other way. The 
colonies had begun this policy before the Revolu- 
tion and George Washington was the holder of man^ 
land warrants issued by the State of Virginia be- 



GETTING LAND TO THE PEOPLE 131 

cause of services he had rendered as a British Officer. 
After the Revolution these warrants were vali- 
dated by the legislature of Virginia, and Washing- 
ton was asked to select lands in Virginia's territory 
to the west. All that territory which is now Ohio 
and Kentucky was then a part of Virginia. When 
Virginia ceded those lands to the federal govern- 
ment, Uncle Sam assumed the responsibility for 
making good on the Washington warrants. Wash- 
ington even went so far as to locate land in Ohio to 
which he supposed at the time of his death there 
was no question of his ownership. His titles did 
not appear in the Land Office records, however, and 
the land was afterward deeded to other individuals. 
The heirs of Washington to-day have a suit against 
the government because of his claim upon this 
Ohio land. 

Of all her public domain the United States has 
bestowed one-seventh gratuitously upon the soldiers 
of her wars. 

The most monstrous transactions in lands that 
this government has ever engaged in, however, have 
taken the form of grants to various railroads. Al- 
together it has bestowed upon railroads as an in- 
ducement to them to build lines into undeveloped 
parts of the country 190,000,000 acres. This is a 
region equal to Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, New York, 
Pennsylvania, and the whole of New England com- 
bined. It is an area vastly greater than the original 
thirteen colonies. Among the first land grants that 



132 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

were ever made to railroads were those that gave 
the Illinois-Central certain alternate sections north 
and south, chiefly in Illinois and Mississippi. 

The Northern Pacific received, in 1864, the largest 
single grant of land that was ever made by the federal 
government. This grant included every alternate 
section for twenty miles on each side of its lines in 
the states and forty miles on each side in the 
territories lying between its terminus on Lake Supe- 
rior at one end and at Portland, Oregon, on the other. 
Altogether this railroad secured title to 45,000,000 
acres of government land. This tract would 
be equal in area to New York, New Jersey, Vermont, 
Connecticut, and Massachusetts. The Southern 
Pacific secured similar grants in California; 
the Atlantic and Pacific through Arizona and New 
Mexico; the Union Pacific and the Denver and 
Pacific through Colorado and states adjacent, and 
other roads in various other quarters. 

No act in the history of the Land Office has been 
so typically a proposition for the booming of real 
estate as were these grants to the railroads. Uncle 
Sam had these vast tracts of unsettled country 
which, without settlers, were valueless. With 
communication arranged these lands would have an 
always increasing value. The federal government 
figured in exactly the way that the owner of a 
suburban tract would figure in offering a street-car 
company certain percentages of his land if it would 
run tracks through that subdivision. The federal 



GETTING LAND TO THE PEOPLE 133 

government has unquestionably profited hugely 
by giving away to railroad companies lands that 
have since attained a value of unnumbered millions 
of dollars. The profits that the railroads have 
gained through an enhancement in these land values 
are almost beyond conception and the present 
values of lands they hold are shocking to con- 
template. 

For a century the nation regarded itself as being 
possessed of a thing in its lands of which it should 
make every effort to be rid. It had in the back of 
its mind the idea that the land should go to the man 
who wanted to establish a home on it, that it should 
remain with the individual settler. But it regarded 
its holdings so lightly that it took little pains that 
the matter should be properly worked out. There 
was land for all, and it was the government's glad 
function to distribute it and let those profit who 
could. There was no thought then of creating 
timber barons or cattle kings, or of coal monopoly. 
The sooner the land got into hands other than those 
of the government the better. And this generous 
donor was not so petty as to discriminate between 
kinds of lands, the uses to which they could be put, 
or the purposes which those might have who got 
them. To classify was a task too difficult or not 
worth while. The lands would classify themselves 
when they arrived in individual ownership. And so 
the door was opened for monopoly and for fraud. 

If the government did not appreciate the invalu- 



134 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

able nature of its assets there were men who did. 
Great fortunes were laid in the vast holdings of 
what had but a short time since been the property 
of the people. There was danger that the many 
still to pour into the West would by necessity be- 
come the servitors of a fortunate and early few. 
On this discovery indifference at once took flight. 
And so out of the abuse of the nation's generosity 
there came a reaction against a policy that was so 
liberal as to be dangerous. 

The nation wanted home makers, but found its 
lands drifting into the hands of corporations who 
were withdrawing them from the market, awaiting 
a time when lands would be more scarce; it gave 
opportunity for many competing coal operators and 
iron manufacturers, but found the sources of raw 
material centering into a few large holdings; it 
wished its lands to be cleared of forests to make way 
for farms, but it found hundreds of consecutive miles 
reserved from use by the fiat of those who appreci- 
ated their worth, and many more miles of watershed 
despoiled of its needed covering in places where 
homes were not possible. 

So there slowly evolved in the minds of the public 
a new policy. The nation awoke to the fact that 
the lands were getting away from the people. Yet 
they were public property. Why should a few 
individuals be allowed to take unto themselves this 
public asset? Why should an individual be allowed 
to file on a parcel of rich coal land under the guise 



GETTING LAND TO THE PEOPLE 135 

of taking unto himself a homestead, and sell his 
claim to the coal baron? Why should he be allowed 
to do the same with the unequaled timber lands of 
the Sierras? Why should an oil field be held as a 
placer claim? Why should railroads be allowed 
to patent mineral lands that were exempted in their 
grants? 

It was in 1906 that the public awoke to the loss of 
its national domain. It asked the authorities at 
Washington what was left out of the empire with 
which it had started. The answer was that there 
remained in continental United States some 
300,000,000 acres of land, an area equal to that 
region east of the Appalachian Mountains which has 
a population of 30,000,000 people. The public 
asked what sort of land remained. The govern- 
ment had not the slightest idea. 

It was then that the nation's real estate office 
sought a way of finding out just what remained on 
its shelves. It called in the Geological Survey, a 
sister bureau in the Interior Department. It was 
found that the organic act creating the Geological 
Survey had stated that one of its duties should be 
to classify government lands. That provision had 
lain dormant but was here seized upon and under it 
a force of active men was placed in the field to take 
an inventory. This classification of the 300,000,000 
acres of government land was one of the gigantic 
undertakings of the government during the decade 
that followed. 



136 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

It required but little investigation to disclose 
the fact that the great mineral wealth of the land 
still left to the government lay in its coal. Theo- 
dore Roosevelt was then President and he immedi- 
ately withdrew from settlement all government 
lands that were suspected of having coal values. 
His example was followed by Presidents Taft and 
Wilson until as much as 75,000,000 acres were 
withdrawn subject to classification. 

When the geologists got into the fields to deter- 
mine what lay beneath these lands that had been 
selling for a dollar and a quarter an acre, they 
revealed to Uncle Sam one of the greatest surprises 
that old gentleman has faced in all his career. They 
reported from Wyoming, for instance, considerable 
finds of coal lands upon which they placed a valua- 
tion of $500 an acre. There were great quantities 
of land worth from $100 to $200 an acre. A mini- 
mum of $20 an acre was placed on coal land within 
twenty miles of a railroad and $10 if more than 
twenty miles from such transportation. In Utah 
were found other great quantities of valuable coal 
that had not yet slipped from the hands of the gov- 
ernment. Colorado contributed other fields; and 
valuable coal was found in Arizona, New Mexico, 
Montana, North Dakota, and other states. Alto- 
gether in the first six years of this work coal lands 
were found and classified with acreage prices defi- 
nitely fixed that brought this known asset of the 
peope of the nation up to $730,000,000 or something 



GETTING LAND TO THE PEOPLE 137 

more than seven dollars for every man, woman and 
child in the nation. Yet the task was then esti- 
mated as being but about one-fifth completed. 

These men of science are remarkably clever in 
drawing conclusions as to the coal that may lie 
under a given piece of land. They may take a 
great mesa twenty miles across upon which there is 
no single outcropping of coal. It may be but a 
sweep of barren desert. They will sink no shaft to 
determine what is underneath. But they may say 
that a hundred feet down there is a strata of coal of 
a certain grade and of a given thickness. Fifteen 
feet below this there is another layer of an entirely 
different quality and of another thickness. The 
land owner who has confidence in their judgment 
may sink a shaft and he will find the facts as 
represented. 

These geologists got the facts upon which to base 
a theory a dozen miles away. At the end of the 
mesa a mountain stream had cut a canyon hundreds 
of feet deep. It had carved its way through the 
stratifications of the ages. On its way down it had 
severed two layers of coal. They might lie flat with 
the surface of the earth or there might be an incline. 
On the other side of the mesa, twenty miles away, 
there might be another cut that revealed the same 
seams of coal. This would show whether there was 
uniformity of thickness and of level. Upon the 
variations the scientists could base an estimate of 
the thickness of the coal and its depth at any point 



138 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

on the mesa. Upon these facts also could they 
place a valuation on all the land on that mesa. 

Such methods of determination of the presence 
and the value of coal are subject to infinite varia- 
tions. The final valuation of the land in question 
considers all the elements of expense of mining and 
transportation. Even a most skilful test of the coal 
is made to determine just what is its heat unit when 
burned. The valuation is so placed that the 
government is assured that a private individual 
may work these claims at a profit whenever there 
is a demand for the coal. 

In the meantime there was passed in 1910 a law 
which permitted the settlement of coal land as a 
homestead, the settler being assigned all surface 
rights but the privilege of mining the coal to be 
reserved and the farmer to be recompensed for any 
damage done his farm when that time should arrive. 
So is the government retaining its wealth of coal 
without stopping settlement of the land. 

Out in the heart of California there are certain oil 
lands that have been yielding $10,000,000 a year and 
which are worth a cold billion dollars of anybody's 
money. All the world had been believing for a 
decade that these lands belonged to the Southern 
Pacific Railroad and to individuals to whom that 
railroad had sold them. That company and those 
individuals had been taking unto themselves the 
huge profits that came from those reservoirs of 
liquid fuel that Nature had stored beneath the desert 



GETTING LAND TO THE PEOPLE 139 

in the ages past. But when the government began 
classifying its land a different opinion developed. 

That the United States still held a strong claim to 
the ownership of these lands was developed in an 
almost accidental way. The man who made the 
discovery was not a lawyer at all but a young 
geologist in the employ of the government. When 
he went to California to classify oil lands in a purely 
scientific study of oil resources, the magnitude of the 
value of lands which had passed into the possession 
of the Southern Pacific in connection with the land 
grants extended by the government at the time of 
its building, appalled him. He read the grants out 
of curiosity and found, to his surprise, that mineral 
lands were excepted from their provisions. The 
only mineral lands that might be patented to the 
railroad were those containing coal and iron. Aside 
from this only agricultural lands might be claimed 
by the company. 

Now oil is scientifically and legally a mineral. 
Oil lands were, therefore, very clearly excepted. It 
was found, however, that title to these lands had 
been issued by the government. Those titles, 
however, noted the exception of mineral lands. 
They were therefore not titles if the lands in ques- 
tion were mineral. When the Southern Pacific 
transferred these lands it likewise noted the excep- 
tions. Whoever received its deeds did so with a 
knowledge of the flaw in the title. So those titles 



140 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

were not titles at all, it was claimed, and the land 
still belongs to the government. 

This contention served the purpose of giving 
notice to all people who were seeking to illicitly 
obtain such lands that a new policy had been 
adopted. The government also took occasion to 
withdraw from settlement all lands suspected of 
containing oil, to have them examined by its classi- 
fiers and disposed of in accordance with their 
findings. 

In California a million and a half acres of oil 
lands were withdrawn, in Utah 2,000,000 acres, 
and in various other states smaller amounts suffi- 
cient to make a grand total of 4,500,000 acres. 

The classification work was already under way 
when, in 1912, the great phosphate scare seized the 
United States. It was asserted that Germany had 
a monopoly upon the phosphate of the world which 
was the basis of the manufacture of fertilizer. 
Germany even owned the important sources of 
phosphate supply in this country, it was asserted. 
It was because of the clamor that was raised in this 
connection that the classification experts in the 
field, most of them geologists, were instructed to 
search for phosphate. In two years they had found 
enough phosphate rock in the West to keep the fac- 
tories of the world busy for a century. In fact they 
proved that the United States has by far the great- 
est wealth in phosphate known anywhere in the 
world. 



GETTING LAND TO THE PEOPLE 141 

When this phosphate land was found it was with- 
drawn from entry until arrangement could be made 
to prevent any possibility of monopoly in its dis- 
position. There were in all about 4,000,000 acres 
of it, located chiefly in Idaho, Montana, Utah, and 
Wyoming, and it is being held against the time 
when it may be needed to make fertile the exhausted 
acres that produce the food of the multitude. 

Quite a different sort of thing is the potash 
deposit. Potash may also be used in fertilizer and 
is much in demand in that connection. But instead 
of being found in the rock of high mountains, 
potash is secured in those dried-up lakes that are 
located in the torridly hot sands of such deserts as 
that of Southern California,. In Searles Lake, in 
the Death Valley neighborhood, in the land of sand 
and snakes and thirst — a region that invites the 
adventurer because of the dangers that it has to 
offer — there are great quantities of potash. Here 
the occasional rains have washed down from the 
hills into these low places and formed shallow lakes 
without outlets. Through the centuries these lakes 
have received these waters and the sun has evapo- 
rated them, leaving behind their salt and borax and 
potash. This latter, being slow to precipitate, is 
found in a sort of mother liquor that still exists 
beneath a salty crust and this may be refined and 
the product secured. 

Searles Lake had been fought over and parceled 
out between hardy characters of the desert before 



142 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

the great demand for potash came. There remained 
other similar lakes that might furnish this product 
and title to which still rested with the government. 
Land in California and Nevada covering such potash 
deposits and to the extent of 225,000 acres has 
been withdrawn from settlement and held until the 
government might determine the proper method of 
disposition. 

All of which is a part of the comparatively new 
policy of the government to get for the people the 
value of and the best indirect benefit from that 
which they still own in the public domain. 



CHAPTER XI 

SMOOTHING A NATION^ KOADS 

UNCLE SAM found, early in the present 
century, that it cost, on the average, 
23 cents to haul one ton one mile over 
his roads. He looked into the situation in Europe 
and found that the same ton might be hauled the 
same mile for 10 cents. He computed the differ- 
ence in the cost of transporting the products of his 
farms at 23 cents and at 10 cents and found that 
he was paying each year a penalty of $250,000,000 
for his bad roads. 

So he began a serious study of how to improve 
those roads. He organized an Office of Public 
Roads in the Department of Agriculture and in- 
structed it to find out what was the matter. Not 
only this but it was to get together all the informa- 
tion of the world on the subject of good roads, was 
to compile that information and place it at the call 
of the public. 

So it happens that when there is a rural county 
in Mississippi, or in Michigan, or anywhere else 
under the flag, that has grown tired of the struggle 
against its gumbo roads or sand roads, or whatever 
sort of bad roads it may have, and wants to lay 

143 



144 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

down for itself highways that will have the effect 
of bringing the markets to the very front door of 
the farm, that county has but to ask and every 
detail of how to bring about the change will be sup- 
plied without the charge of one cent. The govern- 
ment has spent a score of years in preparing itself 
to serve its people in this very way, and is ready. 

The information that has been thus prepared has 
been found to fit particularly well into the system 
of road building that is followed in America. Here 
the governmental organization that builds the great 
mass of the roads is the county. The control of the 
highways of a county are usually under a road super- 
visor, elected by the people, and poorly paid. He is 
usually a man of no special training, of little knowl- 
edge outside his home county, and of an uncertain 
tenure of office which does not make it worth his 
while to learn his business. It is rarely possible 
for a county to properly improve its roads under 
such guidance. Most counties continue under the 
handicap of unimproved roads, some raise large 
sums of money and spend them ineffectually, and 
a few, latterly, are coming to the federal government 
for information. These are patiently shown every 
step from the mud lane to the boulevard. 

Only a great agency like the federal government 
could afford to spend many years and many hun- 
dreds of thousands of dollars in developing such 
information. Certainly a county could not. Years 
of experiment was necessary to determine what were 



SMOOTHING A NATION'S ROADS 145 

the best road-building materials and where they were 
to be found. Other years were necessary in demon- 
strating just how a road-bed should be graded and 
drained. Then the right method of laying down a 
road with the proper foundation, the proper filler, 
the proper crown, had to be studied. Different 
materials had to be used in different localities for 
the cost of transportation made long hauls over- 
expensive. Infinite pains were taken in the study 
of culverts and bridges, their proper placing and 
protection. After roads are constructed there is 
much of understanding that must be applied to their 
maintenance. Proper machinery for road building 
and maintenance is a great study in itself. The 
advisability of road construction on the part of 
any community depends upon a broad understand- 
ing of benefits to be derived. These may not merely 
be the material benefits of a cheaper haul, but the 
indirect possibilities of better schools, more social 
intercourse, the inspiration of a macadam road in 
contrast to the mud ruts. 

In the first fifteen years of its existence the office 
of Public Roads spent more than a million dollars 
in the preparation of this information. It went 
into many counties in many states and constructed 
pieces of experimental road that the people of these 
communities might have the possibilities brought 
home to them and be shown just how the thing 
should be done. Good roads tours were organized 
and the gospel promulgated and models shown, 



146 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

All the road information in the world was placed 
at the disposal of the individual who wanted to 
use it. 

Some of the states have taken over the task of 
laying down the road system and these have been 
units great enough to be able to proceed independ- 
ently with more or less success. But the road 
problem usually is a county problem and the federal 
government has taken particular pains in showing 
the county how to proceed to get the great boon. 
Usually the question is also that of a bond issue to 
raise the necessary money and here, again, is a 
delicate situation to be handled. 

First the community must be brought to see the 
advisability of a bond issue, which means the as- 
sumption of a large loan that bears interest and 
increases taxes. The county, largely because of 
the difficulties in transporting its produce, already 
feels itself taxed as heavily as it can endure. The 
very isolation of its bad roads has prevented its 
residents from coming into contact with the other 
communities that might be object-lessons. A cam- 
paign of education is necessary. Carrying the 
election that provides for the bonds is the first big 
step. 

The thing which is next in importance and with 
relation to which a community is most likely to go 
wrong is in securing a judicious expenditure of the 
money raised from the bonds. Here the difficulty 
lies in persuading the local authorities that they are 



SMOOTHING A NATION'S ROADS 147 

not competent to lay down a system of improved 
roads. No county should allow any man to direct 
the expenditure of the money for which it has 
bonded itself unless he has been engaged in the 
building of modern good roads for at least five years. 
In both these connections the right procedure is to 
consult the authority that has charge of the state 
highways and, finally, the Federal Office of Good 
Roads. 

A primary folly in road-building is the fact that 
the average highway in the United States is sixty- 
six feet wide, whereas thirty feet is adequate. The 
extra space is not merely land wasted but it furnishes 
a breeding-place for weed seeds that cause trouble 
in all the crops round about. 

A national demonstration of the effect of bad 
roads was shown in 1909 when the price of wheat 
in Chicago ranged from 99 cents to $1.60 
a bushel. The price was lowest when the roads 
were best in the summer and reached the climax 
when they were almost impassable. Thus was a 
general case made out against bad roads. Roads 
that are good in all weathers enable the farmer 
to take advantage of favorable prices whenever 
they come. 

The results attained in but a few counties through 
good roads are enlightening. In Mecklenburg 
County, North Carolina, 150 miles of road were 
built at a cost of $3,500 a mile. Land eight miles 
from Charlotte was worth from $10 to $25 an acre. 



148 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

It was soon worth from $50 to $100 because with 
transportation easy, it yielded returns on those 
amounts. Jackson County, Tennessee, spent 
$250,000 on 150 miles of road and soon its lands 
were selling for four times the former prices. A 
macadam road was built to a farm near Gainesville, 
Georgia, which had been bought for $1,800. It 
immediately sold for $4,500. On the Williamsburg 
and Jamestown Highway farmers are now hauling 
1,800 and 2,000 feet of lumber to market where 
they formerly hauled 600. 

In 1893 Union County, New Jersey, against the 
protest of many farmers, spent $400,000 on macadam 
roads. The county soon became the envy of all 
its neighbors and they have all followed its example. 
Abington, Pennsylvania, had a taxable value of 
$3,000,000 in 1892 and bonded itself for $130,000 
for good roads. It has doubled in population and 
trebled in taxable wealth. The State Road Asso- 
ciation of Iowa says that dragging the roads 
enhances the value of adjacent property $10 
an acre. Meigs County, Tennessee, refused to 
improve its roads; it lost 20 per cent, of its 
population and a corresponding amount in taxable 
values. It then decided in favor of good roads. 
The twenty-five counties in Alabama, Arkansas, 
California, Georgia, Nebraska, Mississippi, Mis- 
souri, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, and Michigan 
that have lost population in the past decade have a 
percentage of improved roads of only 1.5. The 



SMOOTHING A NATION'S ROADS 149 

counties that have increased most in population in 
those states have a percentage of 40. 

The road experts state that it is always advisable 
to provide a given system of roads all at once. The 
construction of a large mileage of improved roads 
at one time results in a lower cost per mile than if 
the roads were built a little at a time. Contractors 
having larger plants and quarries furnishing larger 
quantities of material can utilize these at less pro- 
portional expense than on small jobs. It is also 
true that a long stretch of road can be maintained at 
a lower rate per mile than a short stretch, for there is 
enough of it to warrant the employment of watch- 
men and repairers with the proper machinery. The 
long road meets the needs of traffic far better than 
a short one; it connects a larger number of people 
with a market or shipping point. Piecemeal build- 
ing would result in isolated sections of good road, 
and these would be of little benefit; for a team can 
pull only the load that it can drag through the worst 
of the road. For this reason it is vital that the whole 
work of road improvement should be put through 
at a given time, and a large amount of money must 
be raised. In France a good draft horse draws 
3,300 pounds to market a distance of eighteen miles 
any day in the year, rain or shine; and it will be 
remembered that France boasts the most productive 
and prosperous farming people in the world. Her 
roads are largely responsible for this. 

All these things are part of an educational cam- 



150 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

paign that will probably be necessary in securing 
the consent of the voters of any county to bond that 
county for $100,000 or for $500,000 for the building 
of good roads. When an affirmative vote is received 
there is temporary easy sailing. These county 
bonds are regarded as high-class security and sell 
readily in the market. They usually bear 4 or 
5 per cent, interest and sell above par, at some- 
thing like 105. 

When all is ready the proper county official is 
authorized to advertise for bids on the bonds. This 
is usually done in a county, a state, and a financial 
paper, the last-named being located in some finan- 
cial district. The bonds are taken by the best 
bidders and the money is ready. Generally only a 
fourth or a fifth of the bonds are sold at a time and 
in this way the interest on the whole is delayed. 
For a $400,000 issue $100,000 worth of bonds might 
be sold before the work is started and other similar 
blocks as the money is needed. 

An issue of $400,000, which would be sufficient to 
put the roads of a good-sized county in shape, would 
require the payment of $20,000 a year in interest. 
If they were to be retired in thirty years a sinking 
fund of $6,000 a year would be needed, to be placed 
at compound interest for that purpose. Therefore 
the tax rate of the county must be so adjusted as 
to raise an additional $26,000 a year. A county 
that would spend $400,000 for good roads would 
probably have a tax valuation of some $8,000,000. 



SMOOTHING A NATION'S ROADS 151 

If three mills were added to the tax rate this would 
mean that each man would pay 3 cents for each 
$10 of his assessment. A man whose property 
assessment was $1,000 would pay $3 a year, the 
man whose farm was worth $10,000 would pay $30 
and the millionaire would pay $3,000. 

Having duly converted a given block of the bonds 
into cash which is deposited in the county treasury, 
the community is ready to go about the business 
of actually building the roads. It is at just this 
point that more mistakes are made in the expendi- 
ture of county bond money than at any other. The 
county has a road commissioner who is a highly 
respected citizen, an industrious worker and, accord- 
ing to local light, an efficient road man. This man 
is anxious to assume authority in building these 
roads. He wants them as a monument to his honor. 
The county commissioners have confidence in him. 
He is the accredited local authority in road- 
building. To him, therefore, is assigned the task 
of laying down this system of roads. 

This is a mistake. The county that makes it 
may as well set fire to half the money it has 
raised! The commissioner of roads has lived 
regularly in this community of bad roads. He 
has done more or less practical road-building, 
but not on the basis of the task that is being as- 
sumed. His position is like that of a carpenter- 
builder in a village of lumber cottages who is 
suddenly called upon to erect a metropolitan 



152 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

brownstone mansion. He may be the best sort of 
man in his sphere of usefulness, but this is not the 
task for him. It is such men as he who are wasting 
$40,000,000 on roads in the United States every 
year. 

The bonded county should ask the advice of the 
state highway board and the Federal Office of Good 
Roads in selecting a road engineer to lay down its 
system. These offices have been studying roads 
from the broad national and international stand- 
point for twenty years and know many times as 
much about the problem as the county officials could 
ever learn. They are anxious to give the county 
the benefit of their experience. Some states, such 
as Virginia, are so anxious to prevent these mistakes 
on the part of the counties that they offer to pay 
half the expense of road construction if the county 
will build in accordance with the plans of the state 
highway commission. 

The state or federal authorities are always able 
to recommend a road engineer who has had years of 
experience and with whose work it is entirely 
familiar. It has men available whom it knows 
to be efficient road-builders. These men may be 
employed for $2,000 a year or more, the amount 
depending upon the magnitude of the work. That 
salary may be saved in the construction of a single 
bridge. It guarantees an avoidance of the many 
mistakes that would be made by the local authori- 
ties. It guarantees a system of good roads and a 



SMOOTHING A NATION'S ROADS 153 

further installation of the right system of main- 
taining those roads. It means the good-road 
education of the community from the standpoint 
of all that is known about their building and main- 
tenance. It means, furthermore, the use of the 
right material and its economical purchase. 

From a bridge on the Potomac River to Lovetts- 
ville, Virginia, a distance of some ten miles, an 
excellent road has recently been built. It winds up 
a wash and is subject to much heavy hauling. It 
was built of limestone, which was hauled a distance 
of seventy-five miles. Yet the road runs through 
one of the finest outcroppings of trap that is to be 
found in the United States. Trap is the best 
material in existence for the building of heavy 
traffic roads. The local authorities, however, be- 
lieved it was too hard to be crushed! They did not 
know that it was the favorite material of all experi- 
enced road-builders and was being crushed in more 
parts of the nation every day than is any other 
stone. 

Road-building is an exact science. Only the men 
who have mastered that science should assume 
responsibility for spending large sums of money 
on it. The local authority is in all likelihood not a 
competent bridge-builder. Large sums of money 
will consequently be squandered on unfit bridges. 
Probably he is not able to estimate the drainage from 
a given area that will have to pass through a given 
culvert. As a result the road is overflowed and 



154 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

washed away or its foundation is softened. He does 
not know how to locate roads and secure the proper 
grades; and the rains cut them to pieces. 

The building of a macadam road is no small 
undertaking; it requires a proper grade, a proper 
crown, a proper foundation and a -proper use 
of the right amount of the right material. The 
matter of the purchase of this material is vital. 

Under any conditions it represents, delivered on 
the road, a considerable investment. That enough 
of it shall be used to produce a good road that 
will remain a good road and that none of it shall 
be wasted in a too liberal use — this constitutes a 
delicate problem that can be handled only by the 
man of long experience in just this work. The local 
authority who undertakes to lay down a system of 
roads usually makes all these mistakes and more. 
They may be avoided by consulting freely with 
state and national authorities and by obtaining a 
man of proved competence to supervise the entire 
work. 

The federal government has prepared all this 
information for its citizens as one of the tasks that it 
has assumed that the whole people may profit from 
its munificence. 



CHAPTER XII 

COMBING THE WORLD FOR NEW CROPS 

THE federal government in the Department of 
Agriculture, has a corps of workers whose 
duty it is to find out what plants there are in 
Patagonia, or Fiji, or Corea, or on the heights of the 
Himalayas, or down by the Persian Gulf, or any- 
where else in all the world, that might be added to 
the things that are grown in the United States and 
thus increase the output of its farms. 

These workers make up the division of plant 
introduction. There are about a hundred of them, 
in the central office and in the field. The important 
men of the division are scientists who know the 
secrets of plants, where they grow and where they 
might be grown, which could be made to yield money 
returns and which could not; how they can be 
packed for shipment around the world, and where 
they should be planted to grow upon their arrival 
in America. 

The work of this division began about 1900. In 
a decade it had demonstrated its great value, for 
there were single crops that had been introduced 
through its efforts that were yielding many millions 

155 



156 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

of dollars each year. But it had shown even greater 
possibilities for the future. Many plants require 
much time for experiment and establishment. 
There are fruits that require a decade to get into 
bearing and a half century to determine the proper 
varieties for cultivation in given communities. For 
these reasons much of the important work of plant 
introduction must wait scores of years for results. 

But there are many successes already shown. 
There is durum wheat, for instance, the greatest 
success yet demonstrated and one which was defi- 
nitely proved within five years after the beginning of 
the work. A problem of the Department at about 
this time was that of combating a disease of wheat 
known as "rust. " In damp years it often happened 
that whole crops were lost because of the ravages of 
rust. Not having found a way to fight the disease 
at home the government instructed its division of 
plant introduction to find, somewhere in the world, 
a wheat that was immune from rust. 

An agent of the division penetrated to the far 
interior of Russia where the great steppes extend 
over into Siberia and the natives bear a striking 
resemblance to the North American Indians. Here 
is a vast wheat-producing area. Here also condi- 
tions are found that are remarkably like those of the 
Great Plains regions of the United States. There 
is so little rain that the man from America was 
greatly surprised to find that wheat might be grown. 
He measured the rainfall of the region and found it 



COMBING THE WORLD 157 

no more than that of the Great Plains. There 
was no rust in the wheat for there was not sufficient 
dampness. The wheat was hard and flinty and 
productive. The agricultural explorer immediately 
saw the vision of what might be done in the Great 
Plains through the introduction of this wheat. 

Quantities of the seed were sent home and soon 
the wheat was growing in the West. It was tried 
in such regions as the western parts of the Dakotas 
where the rainfall is such as to make crops uncertain. 
It was found that where the drought injured other 
varieties greatly, it injured the durum less, and where 
other crops failed entirely, durum still produced. 
So was it made possible to get heavier crops than 
before on lands where rainfall was light, and to 
grow wheat on great areas in the Dakotas, Mon- 
tana, Colorado, Nebraska, and other states where 
the old crops could not otherwise have been 
secured at all. 

But durum wheat had its discouragements. The 
millers of this country, for instance, put the ban 
on it because it was so hard that they could not 
make it into flour, they said. The Department of 
Agriculture showed them that it was done in Russia 
without difficulty, that it commanded a price there 
that was higher than for other varieties of wheat. 
The Department prophesied that the time would 
come when durum would sell for more in America. 
Yet the millers refused it and the introducers 
experienced the difficulty of supplanting something 



158 UNCLE SAM'S MODEEN MIRACLES 

already established with something new though 
better. 

For a time there was a difference of twenty cents 
a bushel in the price of durum wheat and other 
grades. But eventually the millers adjusted their 
rollers to the requirements of its hardness and found 
that it might readily be ground. The time has 
already come when it is selling ahead of other 
wheats. It is estimated as adding to the produc- 
tiveness of the farms of the Great Plains no less 
than $30,000,000 a year. 

The work of the plant introducers with alfalfa has 
been no less striking and probably no less profitable, 
although the results are harder to measure. Alfalfa 
has attained the first place in the list of America's 
forage crops. The Moors took it from Asia to 
Spain, the Spaniards brought it to Mexico, and this 
country got its first plants when it annexed Arizona 
and California. There it thrived for many years, 
showing little tendency to spread eastward until 
the closing decade of the last century. When it 
started it spread to Canada and to the Atlantic. 

But this alfalfa had staged its life history in warm 
climes and generally had been protected against 
drought by irrigation. As it traveled east and 
north it found severe conditions that it was unable 
to meet. It was not hardy enough for the Dakotas, 
nor could it thrive in the dry regions of the Great 
Plains. Yet both these sections needed just such 
a forage crop as it afforded 



COMBING THE WORLD 159 

At this time nobody appreciated the fact that 
there are differences in alfalfa. The agricultural 
explorers sent varieties of it from Africa and Asia 
and several of these were planted. The Turkestan 
variety of it had grown for years in a plot in Wash- 
ington before it occurred to government scientists 
that it might have qualities that are not possessed 
by the ordinary kind. It was tried where it was 
needed, in the Great Plains region. It developed 
that this alfalfa had been grown for thousands of 
years in Turkestan, the climate of which is similar 
to the Great Plains region. It had developed 
capacities for resisting drought and for resisting 
cold. This ability was due to the fact that its first 
act when it started to grow was to send one big root 
straight down five or six feet. This enabled it to 
tap moisture far down or to nurse the spark of life 
below ordinary freezing depths. These abilities 
made it possible to grow alfalfa in parts of the Dako- 
tas where the old variety would not survive and 
likewise in many of the dry states of the same 
longitude. 

The powers of plant adaptation were shown in 
another alfalfa experiment that took place in 
Minnesota by accident but which has been worth 
many millions of dollars to the American farmer. A 
German by the name of Grimm came to Minnesota 
in 1857. He brought with him a very superior 
variety of alfalfa that was grown in Baden where he 
had lived. This alfalfa he planted in Minnesota 



160 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

and it fared rather badly through the first years but 
Grimm was persistent. After twenty years it was 
noticed that Grimm had fat cattle when other far- 
mers had none. Yet he raised no corn. Inquiry 
showed that his alfalfa was responsible for the 
advantage. Other farmers in his section got seed 
from him and developed alfalfa fields. Seed was 
obtained from other sources but the resulting plants 
were killed by freezes. There was something about 
Grimm's seed that gave it an advantage over 
others. 

The scientists of the Department of Agriculture 
became interested, studied the Grimm alfalfa, 
traced it to its origin and got the German seed. 
This would not stand the freezes. Eventually the 
conclusion was reached that the German farmer, 
persisting through a half century, had developed a 
strain of sufficient hardiness to thrive in Minnesota. 
As only the hardiest plants could each year live, 
they only could bear seed. So each year the weak- 
lings were removed, and, after a half century, all the 
plants in the Grimm stock were able to resist 
Minnesota cold. This likewise suggested the idea 
of searching for hardy strains in the cold regions of 
Asia, and in Siberia some wild alfalfas have been 
found that have survived cold and drought through 
the centuries. Some of these have a yellow blossom 
in contrast to the blue and purple of the well-known 
varieties. The division of plant introduction, in 
fact, has scoured the world and found many varie- 



COMBING THE WORLD 161 

ties of alfalfa with different characteristics. It has 
not only brought them to America but has studied 
and cross-bred them until it has developed many- 
new strains that combine the good points of the 
different cousins of this prolific family. 

Establishing the date industry in the United 
States was a task of greater difficulty than either 
of those already described. The dates of Arabia 
and Persia and Egypt have been an important food 
for millions of people, in that part of the world, 
through many centuries. America had imported 
great quantities of prepared dates. But the idea 
of bringing this crop of the ancient East halfway 
round the world and growing it for western con- 
sumption was slow in germinating. 

In fact the inspiration for the importation of dates 
came about almost accidentally. A scientific man 
of the Department of Agriculture, in charge of 
experimental work at the University of Arizona, 
casually planted the seed of commercial dates on 
the campus of that institution. The plant grew and 
was cared for as an ornamental tree. Eventually 
it came to maturity and, to the surprise of its origi- 
nator, produced an admirable crop of dates. It 
showed that this crop of the East might be grown in 
the arid West. 

In those days the possibilities of preparing and 
shipping living plants half around the world were 
little understood. A shipment of date plants was 
among the first. They came in huge tubs with 



162 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

hundreds of pounds of the soil of Egypt about their 
roots. The process was expensive but successful. 
As good plants were later sealed in tubes and scut- 
tled about the globe as freely as packages at Christ- 
mas time. These plants were set to grow at Phoenix, 
Arizona, and in the desert of southern California. 
They thrived and bore fruit. Then the Depart- 
ment took up a serious study of the possibilities of 
growing dates commercially, encountered many 
baffling difficulties, eventually conquered them, and 
in so doing learned more about dates than was ever 
dreamed of by the sheiks of the East. 

In the first place it was found that given varieties 
of dates required particularly definite climatic 
conditions. A date variety was grown at Tempe, 
Arizona, with great success with the exception that 
its fruit ripened at a season of rainfall in that sec- 
tion, and this spoiled it. It was necessary to find 
a date for this section that ripened at a different 
time. Irrigating at the wrong time was found to 
cause blossoms to fall and fruit to fail to appear. 
The necessity of desert conditions was proved. 
Yet it was shown that the date would stand lower 
winter temperatures than the orange. Eventually 
the greatest setback was encountered, for a para- 
sitic pest got among the date-trees and it long was 
thought that they would have to be destroyed to get 
rid of the pest and a new start made. All of the 
scientific lore of the Department was brought to 
bear on this pest and a way was found to fight it and 



COMBING THE WORLD 163 

exterminate it without sacrificing the trees. Thus 
did the scientists of this government overcome in a 
decade a problem with which the wise men of the 
East had been battling unsuccessfully for four 
thousand years, for this insect still goes uncontrolled 
in Egypt. 

In its study of types of dates and its attempts 
to find those that would fit into various conditions 
of climate in the Southwest, the Department of 
Agriculture sent its explorers to every part of the 
world where dates were grown and soon had every 
important variety fruiting in its experimental 
gardens. No agency ever before had made such a 
world study of this question and no men in the 
world to-day know as much about dates as do 
the scientists of this government. They are now 
prepared to unfold to the Egyptian and the Arab 
and the Persian many of the secrets of date culture 
which have remained closed to them through the 
centuries. Incidentally, the industry has been es- 
tablished in the Southwest and hundreds of growers 
have large groves of trees each of which is yielding 
its 200 pounds of dates each year. 

The establishing of the Smyrna fig in America 
is an interesting romance of science, which baffled 
the experts for two decades and finally was accom- 
plished through the aid of an insect as big as the 
point of a pin. 

The Spanish Padres had introduced figs into the 
Southwest in those days when Captain John Smith 



164 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

and Captain Henry Hudson were trading with the 
Indians of the Atlantic coast. There, as well as 
along the Gulf of Mexico, the figs had grown as 
dooryard fruits and had served no small purpose. 
Later attempts were made to grow them on a large 
scale and to market them in the dried form. Then 
it was discovered that there was on the market 
another fig so far superior that it was impossible 
for the American varieties to compete with it. 
This was the Smyrna fig of the Mediterranean. This 
country imported, during the nineties, an average of 
10,000,000 pounds of Smyrna figs a year which sold 
on the market for twice as much per pound as did the 
California figs. 

Yet the advantages of growing Smyrna figs had 
been appreciated for a quarter of a century. The 
trees had been grown in California and had thrived. 
But the fruit had fallen off before it came to matu- 
rity and the ingenuity of a nation of Yankees had 
failed to find out why it so deported itself. 

As early as 1880, realizing the advantages of 
Smyrna figs over those in the state, a California 
newspaper had introduced and distributed 14,000 
cuttings. They took root and grew prodigiously. 
When the fruiting time came innumerable little figs 
put forth bravely, grew to the size of the end of one's 
thumb, turned loose from the tree and fell. In the 
orchards established no single fig ripened. 

At first it was believed that unproductive plants 
had been sold to the Californians to prevent them 



COMBING THE WORLD 165 

from becoming competitors. Individual growers 
went abroad, superintended the collection of cut- 
tings, planted them and waited anxiously through 
the years — and encountered the same failure. A 
decade passed with these fruitless experiments. 

The next step toward the understanding of the 
situation came about with the discovery that the 
Smyrna fig in its native habitat is made fertile by 
being cross-pollinated with the caprifig, a wild fruit 
of no commercial value. This means that the pol- 
len of the wild fig must enter the developing Smyrna 
fig or the latter will not mature. The Smyrna figs 
of California were falling from the trees because 
there were no wild figs to make them fertile. 

This being demonstrated the growers came to the 
conclusion that they had but to introduce the wild 
fig into their orchards to make them productive. 
The Department of Agriculture shared this belief 
and many caprifigs were distributed for planting. 
The years passed and the caprifigs came to maturity 
and yet the Smyrnas refused to bear fruit. The 
growers and the scientists still were mystified. 

One of the California growers, working upon the 
theory that the pollen of the wild fig must reach the 
interior of the Smyrna, actually got some of that 
pollen into a finely drawn-out glass tube, and using 
this as a blowpipe, forced it into several of the 
Smyrna figs. These clung to the tree and matured, 
being the first of their kind grown in the United 
States. 



106 TJNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

So it was proved that this cross fertilization was 
the condition lacking in the fig orchards. It was 
shown that there was a link in the pollination proc- 
ess present on the shores of the Mediterranean that 
did not exist in California. 

Scientists and growers, knowing of the part that 
insects play in carrying the pollen from one flower to 
another, drew the conclusion that America lacked 
an insect that performed this important task abroad. 
Scientific study abroad proved this conclusion true 
and identified the insect. It is a tiny, wasp-like 
creature the size of the point of a pin but with a 
name bigger than that of the mastodon, for it is 
called " blast ophaga." It lives in the wild fig but 
goes forth from its host at times, enters other figs 
that may be near, and carries the wild fig pollen with 
it. 

The task of the growers then was to make a home 
for blastophaga in the United States. This would 
seem simple enough, but successful insect introduc- 
tion depends on many conditions; such, for instance, 
as an understanding of the cycle of the insect's life 
and the providing of a home for it throughout that 
cycle. The growers and the men of science worked 
for years before this was accomplished. It was done 
through shipping to America trees of the wild fig 
already infected with the insect. Scores of such 
shipments were made without result until, finally, 
a consignment arrived at the right period of the 
insect's development, and it lived and went forth 



COMBING THE WORLD 167 

and fertilized the trees nearby, and generations 
of it have carried the pollen of the wild fig about the 
orchards of the nation ever since. 

So it came to pass, after twenty-five years of 
baffling experiment that the Smyrna fig was estab- 
lished and developed into an important industry. 

There was a series of no less fascinating studies 
and experiments which led to the founding of the 
culture of Egyptian cotton in the hot regions of the 
Southwest where it to-day is growing lustily under 
irrigation and promises to become a staple crop of 
the region. This cotton is more valuable than the 
ordinary varieties, for its lint is longer, which qual- 
ity gives thread or cloth made of it an added 
strength. It will not grow in the humid regions 
where much of America's crop is produced. Much 
study and experiment and cross-breeding was 
necessary before the right strain was developed. 
To-day, however, the United States has a variety 
of Egyptian cotton that is better than anything 
along the Nile, and its scientists know the secrets of 
combating its parasites as do those of no other 
nation. 

There are hundreds of other introductions. 
There is, for instance, the avocado, a salad fruit 
from the tropics, that is slowly fighting its way to 
popularity. There is the tuber from which the poi 
of the Hawaiians is made and which supports as 
many people in the world as does wheat or rice. It 
has been introduced and now may be grown with 



168 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

great cheapness. An explorer has found a per- 
simmon of prodigious size in China and the scientists 
have found a way to rob it of its pucker, thus making 
it possible to use it while it yet is firm and will stand 
shipment. 

Such are some of the accomplishments of the 
government in its attempts to bring to America 
whatever plants there are in the world that may 
yield it profits. The successes that already have 
been attained chiefly are among plants that mature 
in a single season and experiments with which may 
be worked out in a short span of years. A series of 
experiments in the development of such a fruit as 
the peach or the orange requires a generation for 
results, as there are from five to ten years of waiting 
between the time of planting a single specimen and 
the time of its fruiting. But with the work so 
thoroughly in hand the government expects that the 
next half-century will see the unfolding of many re- 
markable developments of the crops of its farms. 



CHAPTER XIII 

BLANKETING THE WOULD WITH WIRELESS 

THE federal government, through the Navy 
Department, is just now busy with the task 
of unrolling upon the earth its blanket of 
wireless communication which will enable the Presi- 
dent, as Commander-in-Chief of the fleet, to sit at 
his desk in Washington and chat with the captains 
of his ships on all the seas of the world, and to move 
those ships in war emergencies as a chess player 
would shift his pawns. 

While the Navy Department has done this, 
primarily, as a part of its work in preparedness for 
war, the benefits derived are largely those of peace 
and humanity. For the great station at Arlington 
may pound out the warnings of storms at sea to 
ships of the Atlantic as far toward Europe as the 
Azores, may sift its warnings down upon all the 
tumultuous Caribbean, and reach the stations of the 
Pacific that its information may be relayed. The 
station at Panama may again send forth air mes- 
sages that reach to Buenos Aires and to Newfound- 
land. Hawaii may pick up the messages from the 
American mainland and reach out with them to the 

169 



170 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

Aleutian Islands at Alaska's tip, and to Fiji, south 
of the equator. Samoa may drive forth the an- 
nouncements of the epoch-making events of the 
world and these may be picked off at any of the 
palm-studded islands of the South Pacific and read 
by those expatriates of all the nations of the world 
who are lolling their lives away in these lazy lands 
of romance. Guam may send forth her call to 
Japan and Australia and all that sprinkling of islands 
that lie between, including 2,000 of the Philippine 
group that rest beneath the Stars and Stripes. 
Finally the station at Manila may take up the 
call and reach out with it to Bombay and to Vladi- 
vostok and give it the possibility of informing a 
billion men of the East. 

This great network of stations may not merely 
hurl forth its messages of those events that are 
happening in the marts of the world. It plays, 
also, a listening part. It may pick up to-day the 
call for help of the ship that is stuck on some reef 
and may be able to direct other ships to the rescue. 
It may tell the story of some volcanic cataclysm that 
has brought starvation to an isolated people. It 
may direct a rescue party in its search for Arctic 
explorers welded into a world of ice. 

For, since the world began, there has never been 
anything like radio for the sending of messages 
broadcast, nor for gathering in calls from the ends of 
the earth. Heretofore telegraph wires and cables 
have led their messages along single lines for great 



BLANKETING THE WORLD 171 

distances. Other wires may have plugged into the 
circuit and picked off messages. These may have 
straggled out and burnt lines of communication that 
streaked a continent as a lightning flash does the 
sky. But always were they dependent upon given, 
man-made wires that stretched from point to point. 

But here is set up a system that may have a single 
station as its center. One man may sit in this 
station and operate a key that brings together the 
electric poles that launch a message into the void. 
That message hurls itself instantaneously from this 
center as a ripple spreads from the point where a 
stone falls into a placid pool. For 3,000 miles it 
reaches in every direction, making a circle with a 
diameter twice as great. It covers one-fourth of the 
surface of the entire globe. There is not an acre 
in all that stretch where the message might not be 
received were an instrument set up that is suited to 
the task. Radio pours forth its flashes as impar- 
tially as the sun its floods of light. 

The development of this remarkable method of 
communication has come about since the year 1900. 
Europe had been busy with experiments during the 
closing years of the past century but it was not until 
1899 that wireless was demonstrated in America. 
In that year Guglielmo Marconi brought several sets 
of his apparatus to this country and it was first used 
in reporting international yacht races for a metro- 
politan newspaper. The Navy Department was 
asked to observe this demonstration of the possibili- 



172 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

ties of wireless telegraphy, and its specially appointed 
board later reported upon it with enthusiasm. 

Following the report of this board the Depart- 
ment placed two ships, the armored cruiser New 
York, and the battleship Massachusetts, and a 
torpedo boat, at the disposal of Mr. Marconi for 
further experiments. A shore station was estab- 
lished at Highland Lights, near the entrance of the 
harbor of New York. This was the first station on 
American soil and these vessels of the navy were the 
first to string wires among their masts for the launch- 
ing of this sort of messages. 

The torpedo station at Newport installed a sys- 
tem the same year. Studies of the various systems 
continued through 1902, and in 1903 twenty sets 
of the arc system of apparatus were purchased and 
installed. So successful were they that in the 
following year it was decided that the entire coast- 
line should be covered with stations. The great 
stations at Pensacola and Key West were estab- 
lished. So rapid was the growth of the new method 
of communication in this country that by June, 
1906, despite its late start, the United States had 
in operation more than half of the radio installation 
of the world. 

As the ability to reach greater distances was 
developed many of the stations on the Atlantic coast 
were abandoned. Stations were established on the 
Pacific Coast at Point Loma, Mare Island, Puget 
Sound, and other points. It was at about this time 



BLANKETING THE WORLD 173 

that the Point Loma station picked up messages 
that were being sent between the U.S.S. Connecticut, 
in Cuba, and the Pensacola station, and the ultimate 
possibilities began to dawn. The small station at 
Juniper, Florida, one day picked up a message that 
had originated in Alaska. Likewise did a torpedo 
boat cruising in the Pacific listen to the send of a 
station on an office building on Broadway. 

At about this time, also, stations were being es- 
tablished along the Alaskan coast and were dis- 
placing the cable. From Sitka and Cordova and 
Kodiak the blanket came to be unrolled and through 
the long night of the northern winter these stations 
sent forth bulletins that were picked up by those 
towns of the inland that had long suffered a half- 
year isolation. Circle City, a thousand miles in 
the interior, put up its receiving apparatus and 
learned of the happenings of the outside world. 
Fairbanks, on the Yukon, listened for the glimmers 
of news. Rampart, and St. Michaels, and Nome, 
became news oases of the north. 

It was at about this time that the government 
began to see the possibilities of a series of great 
stations that should enable Washington to keep in 
touch with its fleet at any point in the world where 
there was any probability of its being sent. It 
looked over the map with the idea of seeing how its 
accidental possessions would fit into a scheme of 
station arrangement that would reach all the seas. 

It found that Key West and Panama extended 



174 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

its reach far to the south and blanketed all of Latin 
America except, possibly, its remotest point, and 
all the waters round about. It found that Hawaii 
was in convenient radio reach of San Francisco and 
practically covered, with a 3,000-mile radius, the 
near Pacific. Samoa was in easy reach of Hawaii 
and made an excellent post for the South Pacific; 
but Guam was a bit hard to reach from either 
Hawaii or Samoa, as it was at a distance that was 
without the circle of easy communication under all 
conditions. With the prospective increases in dis- 
tance that might be covered, the gap between Hawaii 
and Guam was not taken as overlong and it was 
figured that a scout ship might cruise between and 
act as relay if necessary. Guam to the Philippines 
was an easy step and these two stations took care of 
all the Far East. In fact the United States was 
particularly fortunate in possessing territory so 
well distributed. 

It was with these stations in mind that the con- 
tracts were let in 1909 for the erection of the first 
great station at Arlington, just across the Potomac 
from Washington. In building this station the 
government refused to follow the designs of any 
of the commercial companies that were making 
similar installations at various points. One of these 
companies constructs a tower with antennae extend- 
ing from it in the form of an umbrella. Another 
builds a network of wires that cover twenty and 
thirty acres from low towers. The navy design 



BLANKETING THE WORLD 175 

determined on for Arlington called for three towers, 
one 600 feet high and the others 450 feet, with the 
antennae extending from one to the other. 

When this great station was completed in 1912, 
it was found to be possible to communicate with 
all points between Cuba and Newfoundland with 
certainty equal to that of the telegraph. Under 
most conditions San Diego and Mare Island, on 
the Pacific Coast, were in ready reach. Panama 
chatted freely. Manaos, Brazil, soon reported that 
it picked up the Arlington signals every night. On 
certain occasions Arlington was able to catch the 
sending of the station at Hawaii, in the mid-Pacific. 
French scientists, during 1913, 1914, came to Arling- 
ton and each night signals were interchanged with 
Eiffel tower, in Paris. Twice a day, time signals 
were sent out from Washington and it was shown 
that these might be picked up by ships on more 
than half the North Atlantic. Soon the amateurs 
inland began picking off these time signals and set- 
ting their clocks by them. Soon a cheap receiving 
set was put on the market and these were purchased 
by individuals and corporations interested in the 
correct time and the Arlington station found itself 
regulating half the clocks in the nation. So did 
new opportunities for usefulness present themselves 
where they were least expected. 

The construction of high-powered radio stations 
was an art so new at the time that the Arlington 
plant was installed that there is little surprise that 



176 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

some material defects were found. Chief among 
these was the discovery that the towers had been 
placed too close together. They were but 350 and 
400 feet apart. The discovery of the advantage of 
a greater distance between these towers led to a 
change in the plans for the great station at Panama 
which was the next to be built. Here the distances 
settled upon were from 850 feet to 915 feet. From 
the beginning the government determined to build 
one station at a time that it might profit each time 
by the experience previously gained. So was the 
Panama, the San Diego, the Hawaii, the Guam, and 
the Philippine station, each to be better than its 
predecessor. 



CHAPTER XIV 

DAILY MAIL IN THE COUNTKY 

BENEFICENT Uncle Samuel has found a way 
of sending his mailman every day to the door 
of twenty millions of his nieces and nephews 
who live in the country in habitations so scattered 
that it requires an army of 43,000 men, traveling 
more than a million miles a day to reach them. 

At the home of each of these may be left the daily 
paper, other publications that link them with the 
world outside, the letters of friends, communications 
from business associates, packages ordered. From 
them may be borne missives to the absent, orders 
for supplies, the produce of the farm to be delivered 
through parcel post to customers in the city. 

All of which is no small service; for the farm, in 
the days of our fathers, was far removed from the 
multitudinous stir of the outside world and its 
isolation was prone to cause the dweller thereon to 
lose step with the times. Rural delivery was the 
first big advance toward the removal of this isola- 
tion. The telephone followed and did its share. 
Then came parcel post to provide the machinery for 
an interchange of commodities. So has the lot of 
that part of the population which feeds the whole 
been in a measure robbed of its heaviest handicap. 

And rural free delivery blazed the way. 

177 



178 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

The size of this task of delivering the mail to the 
country districts is little appreciated. In 1914, 
twenty years after the first, small, experimental 
appropriation was made, $50,000,000 was being 
paid in a single year to the force employed to 
carry letters to the farmer. For the same year 
the pay of the entire navy, officers and men, amounted 
to $39,000,000. For the same year all enlisted 
officers and men in the United States army received 
$45,000,000. So had this organization, representing 
but one branch of the Postal Service, come, in two 
decades, to represent the expenditure in salaries 
of yearly amounts greater than those of either the 
army or the navy. 

At the end of the first twenty years of its life the 
rural mail service had enlisted a force almost as 
large as the navy and more than half the size of the 
army, and with a larger pay-roll than either. There 
were about 43,000 men who every day hitched up 
their faithful Dobbins and jogged away into the 
country to carry the mails. If this force were con- 
centrated, together with the members of the families 
of its individuals, it would outnumber the people 
making up the States of Wyoming and Nevada 
combined. Were these men, with their wagons, 
strung out in a procession they would reach for 200 
miles. Traveling at the rate of twenty-five miles a 
day, which is standard for a rural mail carrier, it 
would take the procession eight days to pass a given 
point* 



DAILY MAIL IN THE COUNTRY 179 

This body of men spins a web of intercourse that 
covers all rural United States except those portions 
that are very sparsely settled. Wherever there are 
a sufficient number of homes in a given community 
that a postman, in a day's drive, may supply one 
hundred of these with the convenience of daily mail, 
the Postoffice Department feels authorized in put- 
ting on a carrier. Forty-three thousand such have 
already been provided, and the area covered is a 
million square miles. 

So it happens that in all the populous communi- 
ties of the nation, these mail-carriers are every morn- 
ing, regardless of weather conditions, hitching up 
their 43,000 horses. Having been supplied with 
the mail for their routes by other thousands of 
postmasters, they jog forth on their rounds. Were 
the distances they travel added together, it would 
be found that they travel every day, more than a 
million miles. Were their routes strung out they 
would reach forty times around the world at its 
largest circumference, the equator. 

Each of these carriers is in reality a traveling post- 
master. His wagon is an animated postoffice that 
bears the privileges of that institution to all who 
reside along the roads it traverses. The carrier's 
work is but part done when he delivers letters and 
papers to the farmers and collects those epistles that 
have been written by the people who live along his 
route. He carries in his wagon the stamps of all 
the denominations that are to be found in the post- 



180 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

office and these he retails as does the stamp 
clerk himself. The registered letter may be as 
carefully receipted for by the traveling postmaster 
as at any office in the land. Whoever, on a rural 
route, wishes to purchase a money order, has but to 
turn over the cash to the carrier, receive a receipt 
for it, and in this way authorize the carrier to attend 
to the formality of the purchase when he returns to 
the office. Then there is that new branch of the 
postal service, the parcel post, in which the rural 
carrier figures as a very prominent personage. 
The parcel post brings the equivalent of an express 
service with reduced rates to the door of every far- 
mer. The rural carrier is the expressman and it is 
his duty to handle all bundles, coming and going, 
as efficiently as does the agent of the express com- 
pany in any city. Indeed the responsibilities 
devolving on the rural mail route man are not to 
be sneezed at and the 43,000 handling them are of 
necessity intelligent and reliable men. 

Yet here is a governmental force which had no 
existence twenty years ago. There are millions of 
men who are yet young and who were reared on 
farms, who never heard of rural delivery in their 
youth. The present generation in the country is 
inclined to accept rural delivery as an institution 
that has always existed. But as a matter of fact 
its benefits are but of the last few years. 

To be sure it had existed for a long time in the 
thickly settled sections of Europe before it was 



DAILY MAIL IN THE COUNTRY 181 

suggested as a possibility in America. The first 
official mention that it received over here came from 
Postmaster General Wanamaker in his annual 
report of 1891. The first bill ever introduced into 
Congress that provided for its establishment ap- 
peared in 1892 and was presented by Representative 
James O'Donnell, of Michigan. This bill provided 
for an appropriation of $6,000,000 but was not taken 
seriously by Congress and never had any chance of 
passage. 

In 1893 Congress included $10,000 in the Post Of- 
fice Department appropriation for the experimental 
establishment of rural routes. The Department, 
however, made no use of the money. The following 
year $20,000 additional was provided. Still no 
action was taken. There was little demand for the 
routes and the Postmaster General complained that 
the amount was so small that nothing could be done 
with it. The money so appropriated thus accumu- 
lated. In 1896 an additional $10,000 was appropri- 
ated, making $40,000 in all. With this amount the 
Postmaster General actually established a number 
of experimental rural routes, demonstrated to rural 
Americans the virtues of a blessing that they had 
been missing, and started a demand for a service to 
the people by the government that was to increase 
like a fire in a haystack and become one of the very 
greatest of governmental agencies. 

The actual birth of rural free delivery is, 
therefore, 1896. It was in that year that the 



182 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

first routes were actually established. The first 
representatives of the Post Office Department 
to strike forth into the country with their mail 
pouches started from Chariest own, West Vir- 
ginia, that village where George Washington built 
Harewood for his brother Samuel, which was 
named for his brother Charles, to which came to 
dwell also his brother John Augustine, and among 
the people of which there is to-day more Washington 
blood than anywhere else in the world. At about 
the same time routes were established from Uvilla 
and Halltown, also in West Virginia. 

The advantages of the service were such that they 
had but to be experienced to be appreciated. So 
immediate was the demand for the establishing of 
other routes that the year 1897 saw eighty-three 
of them in operation in twenty-nine different states. 
With the years that followed came advances in the 
number of routes to 150, 400, 1,200, 4,000, 8,000, 
15,000, 24,000, to numbers ever increasing at a 
dizzying rate until there were 40,000 routes. Then 
the rapid advances ceased and the growth became 
steady but continuous. 

Could the fathers of rural free delivery have seen 
for a moment the gigantic figures of cost that were 
eventually to be piled up through establishing it, 
there would have been little chance of getting the 
first appropriations. But they saw but the small 
amounts for immediate needs and these were in 
but five and six figures. The tens of millions were 



DAILY MAIL IN THE COUNTRY 183 

a later development and as they were appropriated 
the revenues of the Postoffice Department were 
likewise increasing. It was an institution practi- 
cally on a self-supporting basis and which might, 
therefore, be granted the privilege of branching out. 
The history of these first twenty years of develop- 
ment of the rural mail service may be best shown 
by a table which reveals the history of growth by 
the figures. It follows: 



Year 


Carriers 


Mileage 


Appropriation 


1894 






$10,000 


1895 






20,000 


1896 






10,000 


1897 


83 


1,843 


30,000 


1898 


148 


2,960 


50,250 


1899 


391 


8,929 


150,032 


1900 


1,276 


28,685 


450,000 


1901 


4,301 


100,299 


1,750,796 


1902 


8,466 


186,252 


4,089,075 


1903 


15,119 


332,618 


8,580,364 


1904 


24,566 


552,725 


12,926,905 


1905 


32,055 


721,237 


21,116,600 


1906 


35,666 


820,318 


25,828,300 


1907 


37,582 


883,117 


28,350,000 


1908 


39,143 


891,432 


34,900,000 


1909 


40,499 


925,330 


35,673,000 


1910 


40,997 


950,000 


37,260,000 


1911 


41,559 


1,007,837 


38,860,000 


1912 


42,081 


1,021,492 


42,790,000 


1913 


42,685 


1,038,076 


47,000,000 



When the United States undertook to establish 



184 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

rural free delivery it found precedent in Europe for 
the detail of it but it found no such service estab- 
lished on the stupendous scale that was demanded in 
this country. Areas to be covered are the point of 
greatest difficulty in such a service and in America 
distances are magnificently great. 

It was found that England, including Wales, had 
rural delivery. Yet this area is only about equal 
to that of the State of Illinois. France has a much 
smaller area than California and Oregon combined. 
Germany could rattle around comfortably in the 
single State of Texas, while three nations like Den- 
mark could be laid down on the map of New York. 
In fact the United States has an area greater than 
all Europe and is therefore faced with the task of 
providing rural free delivery extending over more 
of the earth's surface than all the nations of Europe 
combined. Thus may the size of the undertaking 
be appreciated. 

Yet the very size of the country and the sparse- 
ness with which it is populated are matters that add 
materially to the blessing of rural free delivery. 
These conditions but increase the isolation of the 
people living away from the towns. That isolation 
has been one of the chief reasons for the desertion 
of the farm for the city and has made it difficult for 
the people of the farm to keep abreast of the times, 
to maintain the farm on a business basis. 

Before the time of rural free delivery there were 
hundreds of thousands of homes in the United 



DAILY MAIL IN THE COUNTRY 185 

States, located from five to ten miles from any town, 
with but few neighbors, whose only contact with 
the outside world was a weekly or semi-weekly visit 
to that town. There was little reason why they 
should not lose stride. 

Now those people are visited every day by the 
mail-carrier. The farmer takes a pride in this new 
link to the outside world. He instinctively feels 
that he ought to be a patron of this new service. 
In most cases he has longed for the privilege of the 
daily paper. If not he subscribes to it because his 
neighbors do and because he wants the postman to 
stop at his gate. In either way he becomes a reader. 
The farmer has plenty of time. Every night he 
spends two hours over his paper. He reads the 
thfughtful parts of it. He knows his national af- 
fairs. He contemplates what he reads. He lives 
under conditions where thought is easy. He goes 
much deeper into matters than does the city man. 
The thinkers of the nation come from his class. 
This is because city people have no time for quiet 
meditation and therefore develop only a capacity 
for action. 

All the members of the farm household are en- 
abled through rural free delivery, to get the publica- 
tions they want. The young and progressive farmer 
receives his agricultural journals regularly, his wife 
gets the woman's magazines, the children the funny 
papers. Intelligent men and women move into the 
country who would not have done so otherwise. 



186 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

There is psychological suggestion in the daily call 
of the postman. The farmer is proverbially a man 
of little or no correspondence. But every time he 
sees the postman he is reminded of the possibility 
of writing and receiving letters. Since parcel post 
has been established he is further shown the prac- 
ticability of ordering his supplies, the repairs for 
his machinery, of selling his produce through the 
mails. He begins this sort of correspondence and 
finds that he has saved himself a vast deal of incon- 
venience. He writes more and more. His reading 
and his writing are an education to him. He devel- 
ops into a better citizen and a better farmer.* 

The enlisted army of rural mail-carriers, that 
body of men which approaches in size the military 
branches of the federal service and costs more money 
than either of these, what manner of men are they? 

In the first place it may be said that these men 
are as nearly a native born, true American body as 
may be found in any work in the nation. The 
stock in America that has been here longest is 
mostly to be found in the country. The carriers 
are selected from the horse and wagon owning 
people in the communities where they are to work. 
Each individual must furnish his own horse and 
vehicle. He must pass a civil service examination, 
he must have the confidence of the people he serves, 
he must board himself and his horse. 

For meeting all of these conditions he is remun- 
erated to the extent of $1,100 a year. This would 



DAILY MAIL IN THE COUNTRY 187 

seem small pay to the average city dweller, but to 
the man who lives in the country or the small towns, 
it is an attractive possibility. His expenses are 
light. There is much competition for the places. 

The rural mail-carrier of the present time con- 
siders himself a man of wealth as compared to his 
predecessor of a decade or two decades ago. Then 
the carrier furnished everything he furnishes now but 
received, at first, but $300 a year. As his numbers 
increased his salary likewise grew. There are those 
who claim that the concessions that came about so 
regularly to the rural mail- carrier were granted him 
because of his political importance. Here were 
tens of thousands of voters scattered throughout 
the country. They were likewise men who might 
easily be creators of public opinion. They have 
regularly received favors at the hands of all political 
parties. The following table will bear witness to the 
steady increase of their salaries: 



Date of 


Salary 


Date of 


Salary 


Increase 


per Annum 


Increase 


per Annum 


August 1, 1897. 


. ... $300 


July 1, 1907. . 


$900 


July 1, 1898.... 


. . . . 400 


July 1, 1911.. 


1,000 


July 1, 1900.... 


. . . . 500 


September 30, 


1912. 1,100 


March 1, 1902.. 


.... 600 


July 1, 1914. 


1,200 


July 1, 1904. . . . 


.... 720 







CHAPTER XV 

PRODUCING CENSUS FACTS 

THE federal government, between 1910 and 
1914, spent $15,000,000 for the production 
of the eleven books that contain the results 
of the taking of the Thirteenth Census. Each of 
these volumes cost more than a million and a quar- 
ter dollars. Each weighs about four pounds and 
contains a thousand or so pages. Each repre- 
sents the expenditure of about 5,000 pounds of pure 
gold. So, it develops that each has cost more than 
a thousand times its weight in gold. Yet the 
government regards itself as having been wise in its 
expenditure. 

This money has been spent for but one pur- 
pose — the development of information. These vol- 
umes contain but one thing — facts. Had the census 
not been taken these facts would not have been in 
existence. There is no other agency but the federal 
government that could have taken the census, and 
the facts were therefore obtainable in no other way. 
The federal government considered that the people 
would be well served through the development of 
this information. For the taking of a census 

188 



PRODUCING CENSUS FACTS 189 

amounts to the making of an inventory of a nation 
with its people considered as the asset of first im- 
portance, and the government thinks it advisable 
that it should know what is on its shelves. 

The people are counted and various facts with 
relation to them are set down. Uncle Sam wants to 
know where there are tendencies that are working 
to the betterment of the nation, that these may be 
encouraged. He wants to know where there are 
drif tings toward the rocks of individual or national 
danger that steps may be taken to throw out the 
lifeline. He wants to take stock of all his people 
that he may know how to keep his house in 
order. 

The census shows him how many people there are 
in the nation. It shows what they are all doing and 
how many are doing nothing. It shows him the 
nationalities of those who are breeding the Americans 
of to-morrow. It shows him whether the lands are 
going into the hands of the few or of the many. 
It shows him to what extent the people are concen- 
trating in the cities. It shows him the thousands 
of tendencies of national life that mean advance- 
ment or calamity in the future. 

Physically the making of a census is a gigantic un- 
dertaking. It required the building up of a force of 
75,000 people to work for the brief period of from two 
to four weeks. This army of enumerators faced the 



190 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

task of visiting every home in the nation, of report- 
ing upon every individual with relation to nearly a 
score of points. The government wanted to know 
the name, color, sex, age, conjugal condition, place 
of birth, citizenship, occupation, literacy, and other 
vital facts for each man, woman, and child. Aside 
from this there was the special census on manu- 
factures and on agriculture, each revealing the facts 
with relation to those so engaged. 

But the gathering of these facts, while it required 
the spreading of a vast dragnet and its drawing in, 
is but a small part of the work of taking a census. 
The real task is the conversion of this information 
into usable shape. While the facts are gathered in 
from two to four weeks, the compilation requires 
as many years, spent in top-speed activity. 

The scope of a census has always depended on the 
possibility of handling the returns and getting them 
in print while the information was still new. In 
censuses of the past the reports resulting have 
appeared as much as eight years after the enumera- 
tion. The facts handled in those early enumera- 
tions were always limited to the possibility of com- 
pilation in a reasonable time. 

But during the last three censuses electric tabu- 
lating machines have made it possible to handle 
information with much greater rapidity than ever 
before. They have also made it possible to record 
more facts with relation to each individual and yet 
produce the result in time. 



PRODUCING CENSUS FACTS 191 

This mechanical phase of census taking can be 
but briefly touched upon here. It depends, in the 
first place, upon making a record of the facts with 
relation to each individual by punching holes in a 
card at given points, as a street-car conductor 
punches a transfer to indicate time and point of 
changing cars. It depends, in the second place, 
upon the interpretation of the meaning of those holes 
by an electrical machine into which they are fed. 

The Census Bureau makes one of these cards with 
the holes indicating age, sex, occupation, etc., for 
every individual under the flag. These go into the 
tabulating machines. As they pass through those 
machines, each hole permits an electrical contact 
at a certain point of the journey. That contact 
causes the register of one count in the tabulation 
of the fact indicated by the hole. When all the 
cards have been put through, the sum total of all 
the individuals of a given sex, age, or occupation 
will have been registered. The machine makes this 
tabulation possible in a much shorter time than it 
could have been accomplished by old methods. 

But even with the help of all such conveniences, 
it required four years to complete tabulation. 

But the story of a census is not a recitation of the 
difficulties of its making. The great purpose that 
lies back of it, the good that results from the use 
of the information compiled, is the matter of im- 
portance. This may, perhaps, most properly be 
illustrated by indicating some of those vital facts 



192 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

of the last census that may be used to the benefit 
of the race. 

The eleven $15,000,000 red-cloth volumes are 
considered a closed book to the average reader. 
There are probably more readers of Sanscrit than 
of statistics. Yet most anybody could read the 
facts of these census tables had he but the courage 
to undertake the task. As a mere man of the 
street I dig into them and produce the following 
information which you must admit is interesting, 
sometimes startling, contains human interest, and 
even romance. 

There has been, for instance, a lot of talk of recent 
years about the drift away from the farm and to the 
city. This tendency has been one of the movements 
that has been regarded as leading toward calamity 
for the nation. From census to census there are no 
facts upon which may be based a conclusion as to 
whether the tendency is augmenting or decreasing. 
But for the census there would be no determining 
this tendency. Yet every man has a sufficient 
interest in the well-being of his country to want to 
know the present status of this matter. Those 
men in public life, knowing the tendency, might 
find a way of avoiding calamity. The individual 
could throw his mite toward prevention of calamity 
by supporting legislation that pointed the way. 

Well, here are the facts: In 1910, 46.3 per cent, of 
the population lived in the cities. Ten years before 
but 40.5 of them were city dwellers. The gain was 



PRODUCING CENSUS FACTS 193 

nearly 6 per cent, in a single decade. This gain 
was 2 per cent, greater than in the decade that 
preceded. If the figures of 1900 were alarming, 
those of 1910 are doubly so. The most calamitous 
tendency of the nation is being accelerated. 

Even so interesting a subject as matrimony, and 
the possibilities of accomplishing it, can readily be 
illuminated from the census reports. It would 
seem that the women of the nation need not despair 
of the chance of marriage. There are, in the United 
States, 106 men to every 100 women. All the 
women might get married and still six men out of 
each hundred would, of necessity, remain single. 
Were every female in the United States married, 
there would still be 2,822,809 unmarried males, for 
this sex is to that extent in the majority. The 
chance for women to marry is much better than in 
Europe where there are but 96 men to every 100 of 
the opposite sex. 

As a matter of fact there were, in 1910, 8,000,000 
unmarried men above the age of twenty and but 
5,000,000 women to marry them. The deadliness 
of the few years that follow the arrival at maturity 
may be shown by the fact that there were but 
4,600,000 unmarried men above twenty-five. There 
were 2,700,000 women as possible spouses for them, 
indicating excellent matrimonial opportunities for 
women, but less favorable conditions for the men. 

Were a young woman of marriageable age to look 
about for a community where matrimonial possi- 



194 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

bilities were greatest, her best guide book would be 
the census reports. She would put the ban first 
on the District of Columbia. There are but 90 
men to 100 women in the nation's capital, it there- 
fore taking first rank, from a feminine standpoint, 
as an unfavorable matrimonial market. Even in 
Massachusetts and Rhode Island there are 94 men 
to each 100 women. North and South Carolina 
are the only other states where the women are in the 
majority. As one goes west the predominance of 
the men increases. In Kansas there are 111 men to 
100 women; in Oklahoma, 118; in Arizona, 135; 
in the State of Washington, 163; while Montana 
suffers from the greatest female famine of them all, 
with 187 men to each 100 women. 

If one turns to the tables of illiteracy, the gratify- 
ing fact is revealed that there are fewer illiterates in 
the nation to-day than there were in 1880, despite 
the doubling of the population. An examination of 
the table of illiterates shows the rather startling 
fact that of the native born of native parents there 
are 3.7 per cent, illiterates, while of the native born 
of foreign parents there are but 1.1 per cent, of 
illiterates. So is it indicated that the child of the 
immigrant is making better use of its educational 
opportunities than is the child of the native Ameri- 
can. Of the negro it can be said that in a single 
decade, from 1900 to 1910, the degree of illiteracy was 
reduced from 45 to 30 per cent. 

One of the first facts revealed in the census of 



PRODUCING CENSUS FACTS 195 

agriculture was that the farm lands of the nation 
had increased in value in a single decade by just 100 
per cent. There were but a few, very small com- 
munities where the increase had been less than 25 
per cent. All that great block of land from the 
Atlantic to the Missouri River represented an ad- 
vance in value of from 50 to 100 per cent. West 
of the Missouri half the land is mapped as increasing 
from 100 to 200 per cent, while the other half 
increased more than 200 per cent. The increases 
in farm land values in this single stretch of ten years 
are such that if presented to the average man of 
business by a dealer in lands, they would have little 
chance of being credited. The census shows it all in 
a map that has one sort of shading for a certain 
increase and another shading for another increase 
and the whole thing may be seen at a glance. 

But 46 per cent, of the land of the nation is now 
in farms, and of this but 54 per cent, is actually 
cultivated, so there would seem to be plenty of room 
for agricultural development. Yet the area in 
farms for the ten years increased but 4.8 per cent., 
which was by no means in proportion to the increase 
of 21 per cent, in the population of the country. 

The United States, as a new country seeking to 
avoid the mistakes of those that have gone before, 
has taken much thought of the hands into which its 
lands fall. It has appreciated that the ideal arrange- 
ment is that under which the land is owned by the 
man who tills it, rather than by an absent landlord 



196 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

renting it to a tenant. The difference is largely in 
the citizenship developed. One system creates in- 
dependent land owners and the other dependent 
serfs. There is also the difference of better farming 
on the part of the man on his own soil. 

As far back as 1880 the tenant farmer began to 
appear in sufficient number to alarm those men who 
have seen the vision for America. The census of 
that year showed that 25 per cent, of the farms were 
operated by tenants. In 1890 this had increased 
to 28 per cent, and in 1900 to 35 per cent. The 
facts for 1910 were awaited with much anxiety. 
They showed 37 per cent, of the farms worked by 
tenants. This is not an alarming increase and was 
probably lessened by the particularly prosperous 
times among farmers which enable tenants, in 
many cases, to purchase homes. Yet it is a defi- 
nite increase. 

As the census was being compiled Congress turned 
its attention to the matter of rural credits. The 
census of agriculture produced the facts as to farm 
values, farm mortgages, farm production. These 
were the basic figures for the laying down of a credit 
system and there would have been no such informa- 
tion in existence but for the census. So are some 
of the purposes it serves revealed. 

An interesting fact developed in this enumeration 
is that the farm which is mortgaged yields better 
crops than that which is not. It has a working 
capital, live stock, implements. Statistics show 



PRODUCING CENSUS FACTS 197 

mortgages to be as effective as fertilizer. The 
owned farm yields better returns than that farmed 
by a tenant, the long time tenant gets better returns 
than his fellow who moves every year. This latter 
individual is the worst farmer of them all. He 
makes no effort to maintain soil fertility, to keep up 
fences and buildings, to build up the community 
through such developments as good roads, to do 
justice to his children in the schools. The one-year 
tenant is the hooligan of the farm. 

The agriculture census has a thousand applica- 
tions. It should be explained that the facts by 
states and by counties are compiled and are issued 
separately in pamphlet form. There is a pamphlet 
for each state. If a New Yorker is contemplating 
moving into a certain county in Kansas, he may 
ask the census bureau for its agriculture bulletin 
on that state and from it may learn exactly every- 
thing that is produced. If a manufacturer of milk 
cans is sending out salesmen or placing advertise- 
ments he may determine the advisability of cam- 
paigning in a given field by getting these pamphlets 
and ascertaining the number of dairymen operating 
thereabouts. 

Population, agriculture, and manufactures are 
the three large items covered by the census. Here 
are the people and the two basic industries. Four 
volumes of the $15,000,000 set of books are given 
over to the people, three to agriculture, three 



198 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

to manufactures, and the final, small volume on 
mines and quarries. 

The books on manufactures would seem to be a 
dry subject also. Yet it puts forth just the tasks 
to which all the people have set their hands. It 
shows an increase of 30 per cent, in the number of 
manufacturing establishments as against the 4 per 
cent, increase in farms, thus showing the national 
tendency toward manufacturing. There were, in 
1909, 7,600,000 people employed in these industries, 
getting more than $4,000,000,000 in annual wages 
and turning out a product worth $20,000,000,000. 

The increase in the value of this product in a 
decade was $9,000,000,000. 

The industry of them all that adds most wealth 
to the nation is the foundry and machine shop. 
Lumbering ranks second and, though it might not 
have been suspected, printing and publishing comes 
third. The value of the output of the packing 
houses is greater than any of these, but the raw 
material was comparably more valuable and the 
process of manufacture did not add so much to it. 

The facts about any conceivable article of manu- 
facture are readily accessible. This information 
is particularly valuable to Congress when tariff 
schedules are being considered. If it were proposed 
to take the tariff off of some obscure article as, for 
instance, oakum, the man engaged in that produc- 
tion might cry out that an industry would be ruined 
and all the people supported by it forced into idleness. 



PRODUCING CENSUS PACTS 199 

Without a census the Congressman would have no 
idea of the damage done were this true. With the 
census at his elbow, he turns to oakum, whatever 
it may be, and finds that there are six factories 
producing it, that they employ 113 people and that 
their annual product is worth $338,000. He has 
these facts as a basis for action. 

Great numbers of facts with relation to any in- 
dustry are on file. States and cities are tabulated 
with reference to their importance in given in- 
dustries. It is shown that St. Louis is increasing 
rapidly in the boot and shoe manufacture, that 
automobile manufacture increased fifty fold in a 
decade and that the single city of Detroit in some 
way got nearly one-fourth the nation's business. 
Connecticut makes about one-fifth of the clocks and 
nearly one-twelfth of the corsets of the whole coun- 
try. Practically all the grindstones come from Ohio, 
as does almost one-half the manufactured rubber. 
Every table indicates a romance of business. 

The constitution of the United States provides 
for the taking of the census. The original pur- 
pose back of this provision is the determination 
of population as a basis of representation in Con- 
gress. The census still performs this service but 
the development of those great facts that underlie 
our civilization and indicate the trend of national 
life, have come to be recognized of vastly greater 
importance. 

Census work was not on the basis of a permanent 
bureau until 1902. Its organization had formerly 



200 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

gone out of existence when the work of each ten- 
year census was finished. But the demands for 
the compilation of other facts were such that a law 
was passed which made the bureau permanent and 
assigned certain work for the reduced force between 
decades. 

It was decided that the census on manufactures 
should be taken each five years. Congress also 
required the collection and compilation of an annual 
report on cotton ginning. It was determined that 
an annual report on the financial statistics of cities 
of over 30,000 population should be published. 

This latter opened up a most useful and interest- 
ing possibility. The study of municipal economy is 
important in every urban community. Each city 
government would like to compare its schedules of 
expense with those of other cities of similar popula- 
tion. Each city government, with the figures in 
hand, could see at a glance what municipalities were 
operating police departments, fire departments, 
sanitary services, or any other of the ordinary 
branches of work, on the most economical basis. 
Those cities, if their services were found efficient, 
should furnish valuable object lessons. Among all 
the cities might be picked, from these reports, those 
that were most efficient in each branch of work, and 
a given municipality might combine the good points 
of each in a single administration. Thus is shown 
another advantage of the possession of facts. 

The Census Bureau is also engaged in the collec- 



PEODUCING CENSUS FACTS 201 

tion of vital statistics — the facts of birth and death. 
If those interested in healing, know, for instance, 
that 100,000 babies die each year of summer com- 
plaint, there is the opportunity of a concentration 
of effort on that disease. Summer complaint is due 
entirely to feeding the baby wrongly. These 100,- 
000 lives could be saved each year if the mothers 
of the nation could be brought to feed their babies 
properly. The method of accomplishing this end 
would appear to be a campaign of education. The 
development of the facts points to this great need. 
So is an application of such information shown. 
So is revealed the human side of so forbidding a 
thing as columns of figures. 

The taking of vital statistics lies in the province 
of the state. Few of the states, in this country, 
require the reports of births and deaths. The 
Census Bureau is urging all the states to make this 
requirement. So would the central government be 
given this valuable information for the whole 
country. It is one of the movements that is being 
fathered by this branch of the federal government. 
It has as its object, as have so many of the activities 
of Uncle Sam, the betterment of the condition of all 
the people. 



CHAPTER XVI 

ACCUMULATING HOARDS OF GOLD 

EVERY working day in the year a hypo- 
thetical dray backs up to the mints of the 
United States and unloads a ton of pure 
and refined gold. The mints of the United States 
regularly consume such quantities of the yellow 
metal as a large-sized hotel consumes of coal. The 
nation is buying this standard of value by the ton, 
and never does a day pass without the purchase of 
such an amount as would make a good two-horse 
load of it. 

Treasury statements for the past years show that 
the United States is piling up in its treasure houses 
such amounts of gold as would make the wealth of 
Midas and Crcesus look like the paltry change for 
an afternoon's shopping. The wealth of its stores 
is amounting to such stupendous figures as would 
make the gold of "Ormus and of Ind" pale into 
insignificance. 

The balance sheet shows that the United States 
has already put aside a thousand million gold dollars,, 
coined and ready for use. These actual gold dollars 

202 



ACCUMULATING HOARDS OP GOLD 203 

are snugly tucked away in her mints and treasuries. 
Aside from this, she has $300,000,000 — or more than 
500 tons — in gold bullion ready for the coining. 
Then there is the matter of $700,000,000 in coin 
that is being circulated among the people and held 
by banks. Altogether, the gold of the nation is 
worth nearly $2,000,000,000. 

Two billion dollars is a term too large to be 
grasped by the intelligence of man. To appreciate 
the amount of this gold it must be reduced to grosser 
terms, it must be translated into the large measures 
in which the bulky things of ordinary life are han- 
dled. A beginning may be made by stating that a 
thousand dollars in gold weighs just 3.86 pounds. 
Forty thousand dollars would weigh a little over 
150 pounds, and might be carried upon the shoulder 
of a man of average strength. So it would require a 
force of 50,000 men, or as many as those enlisted 
in our navy, to shoulder the actual gold of the 
nation. The largest force that worked on the 
Panama Canal could just about pick it up. It 
would break the backs of the populace of any of our 
cities of 100,000 people to carry this gold a block. 

The gold of the nation would weigh about 7,720,- 
000 pounds. This would make 128 box-car loads 
of the precious metal, for a box-car is supposed to 
haul 60,000 pounds. To pull this 3,860 tons of pure 
gold through the paved streets of one of our cities 
would require about 4,000 horses, and these teams 



204 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

would stall if they got onto the comparatively bad 
roads of the country districts. 

Such is a sort of measure of the gold for money 
that is in the baby nation of the West at present. 
There is not a nation on the earth that begins to 
approximate the amount. In France there is a 
little more than half as much, and Russia has about 
the same amount as France. These two nations 
taken together would have a little more gold than 
has the United States. There are, however, no 
other two nations whose combined gold stock can 
approach that of the United States. The stores of 
Great Britain, Germany, Austria, and Italy com- 
bined are less than those of the United States. The 
United States is the Croesus among nations. 

The United States has been riding upon the very 
crest of the great, golden wave that has been sweep- 
ing the world for twenty years. For, in the past 
two decades, sterile lands on many continents have 
been awakening from a drowse of aeons, have been 
showing their hidden charms to the venturesome 
spirits of many nations, and those adventurers have 
been garnering that unsuspected wealth. This 
latent gold has found its way into many activities 
and the whole world has become possessed of that 
fever for accomplishment which is bred of success. 

For the world was poor in gold at the middle of the 
nineteenth century. In 1850 there was less than 
$300,000,000 worth of gold in the whole world, and 



ACCUMULATING HOARDS OF GOLD 205 

this included all gold plate and jewelry. Uncle 
Sam has one little mint out in Denver that contains 
nearly twice as much gold as the whole world pos- 
sessed sixty years ago. The world is now producing 
every six years more gold than existed in the hands 
of man at that time. The stimulus for gold produc- 
tion was then not great, for the nations of the world 
were not using it as a basis of their money circulation. 
The Bank of England then had a paltry $85,000,000 
in gold, while the Bank of France had $15,000,000. 
Despite the fact that these were the palmy days of 
the California gold fever, the world production was 
only a little over $100,000,000 in gold a year. In 
fact, with little fluctuation, this small yield of the 
yellow metal held up to the dawning of the golden 
era of the world, to the coming of the past score 
of years. 

In 1890 the world produced $118,000,000 in gold. 
That was the last of the old conditions. That was 
the dawning of the golden era. For from that year 
the tide of the yellow metal has been bearing in 
upon the peoples of the civilized world in an ever- 
increasing flood. By ten and twenty and fifty mil- 
lions a year did the increases mount until in seven 
years production had doubled and twenty years 
showed a production of nearly four times that of 
1890. A table of ever-increasing production will 
tell the tale of the mounting golden tide, until 1913, 
when production fell slightly. It is here given: 



206 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

World's World's 

Year Production Year Production 

of Gold of Gold 

1890 $118,848,700 1902 $296,048,800 

1891 130,650,000 1903 325,527,200 

1892 146,651,500 1904 347,150,700 

1893 157,494,800 1905 380,288,700 

1894 181,175,600 1906 401,973,200 

1895 199,404,100 1907 410,550,300 

1896 202,956,000 1908 442,646,200 

1897 237,504,800 1909 454,422,900 

1898 286,879,700 1910 454,703,900 

1899 306,724,100 1911 466,000,000 

1900 254,576,300 1912 466,136,000 

1901 260,992,900 

But this 870 tons of gold that is being produced 
every year. Where is it going? The answer is 
that it is going into the treasure houses of the na- 
tions. In 1890 there was comparatively little gold 
in the vaults of the governments of the world. It 
was about that time that the great nations began 
adopting gold as the basis of their currency. Since 
that time practically all of them have gone upon 
the gold basis. They needed great stores of this 
measure of value to hold in lieu of certificates of 
credit issued against it. The treasure vaults of all 
the world were opened to gold and gold responded 
at just the right moment and has been pouring 
unceasingly into them. 

So has it recently come to pass that here and there 
the world around have been concentrated great 
amounts of yellow gold. The United States has 



ACCUMULATING HOARDS OF GOLD 207 

vastly more of it than any other nation, but this is 
split up among a dozen mints and treasuries in 
such a way that this country may not claim the 
greatest amount of it under a single roof. 

This distinction belongs to France and to Russia, 
which nations have about equal amounts of gold. 
The Bank of France and the Bank of Russia are the 
greatest single treasure houses on earth. There is 
about $800,000,000 in gold in each of them, and 
concentrated under a single roof in each case. In 
these treasuries there is stacked up some 1,150 tons 
of gold in each case. It would take a man with a 
good wagon and team something like two years to 
transport this money a dozen blocks as wheat might 
be hauled from one granary to another. 

After these two great banks there is more gold 
in the mint at Denver than at any other one place 
in the world. In the new treasure house of that 
mountain city there was, on the first day of the year 
1914, $510,000,000 in gold. Most of this gold was 
at San Francisco at the time of the earthquake and 
fire at that point. Had the mint at San Francisco 
dropped into a crack in the earth at that time 
more than $300,000,000 in gold would have been 
lost. But this greatest treasure of Uncle Sam re- 
mained intact. Afterward it was decided that 
Denver was a safer city, not only from the earth- 
quake standpoint, but because of its immunity 
to attack in time of war. The wealth of the Denver 
mint would be no small treasure to be captured by 



208 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

a nation with which the United States was fighting. 

Uncle Sam found himself so weighted down with 
his wealth at San Francisco that it was no mean 
task to transport it to Denver, a thousand miles 
away. In fact there were 580 tons of this gold to be 
moved. This would make up one freight-train of 
twenty snugly loaded box-cars. But Uncle Sam 
was unaccustomed to shuttling solid freight-trains 
loaded with gold from one part of the country to 
another, so he decided to let this transportation 
business out to an express company. He found 
one that could give an iron-clad bond for a carload 
of gold, and allowed this company to take the 
money through in piecemeal, which it finally did. 

In the Denver mint there are twin tiers of vaults 
that are made as forbidding and immune to attack 
as it is possible to build them. There are some 
thirty of these vaults. In eleven of them there are 
sealed $30,000,000 each. When the money is 
once checked in, these vaults are sealed in such a 
way as to make access to their contents possible 
only through the most elaborate ceremony. Other 
vaults have smaller amounts. Finally there is 
about $100,000,000 in gold bullion stored away at 
this treasure house, for Uncle Sam is not now coin- 
ing all his gold. Altogether the wealth of the Denver 
treasure house is greater than that of any other 
store in America and threatens to soon surpass the 
treasures of France and Russia. 

The mint at Philadelphia is the second greatest 



ACCUMULATING HOARDS OP GOLD 209 

of Uncle Sam's treasure houses. In it is usually to 
be found $300,000,000 to $400,000,000 or something 
more than 600 tons of gold. At San Francisco 
there is $170,000,000 in gold; at Chicago, New- 
York, St. Louis, and the different mints and assay 
offices, are to be found various odd millions in coin 
and bullion. 

The nations of the world, being on a gold standard, 
are pledged to buy all of that metal that is offered. 
The United States is now getting about $100,000,000 
of it a year and at that rate will double her treasure 
in twenty years. In that time the supplies in the 
mints will be such as to make those of the present 
look paltry. At the very lowest estimate it seems 
safe to say that a billion dollars will be added to the 
hoarded gold of this nation every decade. By the 
end of the century, at this rate, we will possess 
$10,000,000,000 in gold. The storehouses will have 
to be enlarged that there may be places to pile 
the ever-incoming stream of yellow metal. In 
two and three centuries the wealth of it will be be- 
yond conception, for the figures of to-day stagger the 
imagination. 

There is a strapping son of Sweden, named Han- 
son, who works in the coin vaults at Washington. 
His sole business is to pile great sacks of money one 
upon the other. Coin in the great vaults is as 
treacherous as quicksand. These bags of silver and 
gold must be carefully deposited or the mass is 
likely at any time to shift and come tumbling down, 



210 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

upon the heads of the workers. Not long ago a 
worker in the mint at San Francisco was crushed 
and killed by having $9,000,000 in gold fall upon 
him. The trained men who work in these vaults 
are ever watchful for the rattle of shifting coin 
which gives warning of the approaching collapse of 
a great stack of money. Hanson is a past-master 
of the art of so piling these stacks of coin that they 
will lie safely in place. He tosses the sixty-pound 
sacks about as though they were playthings; and 
wherever they are placed, there they may be de- 
pended upon to stay. 

So the calling which Hanson follows may be 
expected to increase as the years pass. The gold 
production of America goes steadily on. Africa, 
which has loomed large in the yield that has 
given the world its golden era, is still turning out its 
yellow flood without abatement. Australia shows 
an occasional fluctuation, and Mexico lost her 
stride because of war. All the time, however, there 
are new fields being developed and all the time there 
are greater chances of new discoveries, for the world 
is being prospected now as never before. 

Another element that has largely influenced the 
output of gold is the improved and cheapened 
methods of milling. Since the cyanide method of 
reduction came into use at about the opening of the 
golden era, hundreds of mines that might not pre- 
viously be worked have become economically profit- 
able. So may new methods in mining make it 



ACCUMULATING HOARDS OF GOLD 211 

possible in time to work ores that are to-day too 
low grade to pay, and so may the ever-increasing 
production be augmented. 

This out-pouring of gold had the effect of furnish- 
ing a medium for the transacting of business just 
as the world was awakening into an era of unprece- 
dented trade expansion. To get this idle money 
so created into use, the banks reduced their rates of 
interest to a very low level. Borrowers immediately 
appeared and soon this money had found its way 
into business. Shipbuilders were particularly ac- 
tive. This opened up new avenues of trade and new 
outlets for activity. The farmer and the merchant 
followed the gold miner and production along gen- 
eral lines took the place of seeking after gold. So 
has the appearance of great quantities of gold within 
the decades since 1890, unleashed industries without 
number. 

For all this mass of increasing gold piling up in 
the United States Treasury, one man is responsible 
personally. The Treasurer of the United States 
gives his bond for its safe keeping. His commission 
states that he shall be responsible for all the moneys 
in all the treasuries and that in case of the loss of 
any of it he is adjudged criminally liable. His only 
relief from criminal prosecution under the law would 
be through Congress. If a dynamiter in San 
Francisco blew open a vault in the mint and stole 
a bar of bullion, the Treasurer could be held for 
embezzlement under the law. 



212 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

The director of the mint is the next man in re- 
sponsibility for the gold of the nation. It is under 
his supervision that the bullion is changed into coin. 
All the machinery that operates this change and 
all the safeguarding that must of necessity surround 
it are under the direction of this official. 

These two men sit in their offices in Washington 
and watch the flow of the yellow gold. They feel 
the rush of it and prepare for the care of its vast 
volume. They are the men who are estimating 
the storage needed for future hoards. They are 
the men most likely to look into the vista of the 
future and wonder what will be the end of the flood 
of gold that is mounting ever higher. But it is not 
for them to speculate upon a gold-glutted future 
and possible results of that surfeiting upon the 
history of business and of nations. It is not for 
them to say that the present high price of necessities 
is or is not due to the presence of great quantities of 
gold and a consequent cheapening of that standard 
of value. This is a field equally profitable for the 
political economist and the romancer, and the one 
throws down the gauntlet to the other. 

The American, however, may take a bit of pride 
in the fact that his country has outstripped all the 
world in the acquiring and storing of this standard 
of wealth. If a nation may be measured by its 
gold, the United States is as great as any two of the 
other powers of the earth. 




EIGHT MILLIONS IN GOLD IN A CORNER OF UNCLE SAM'S 
TREASURE HOUSE 




COL. WILLIAM CRAWFORD GORGAS 



CHAPTER XVII 

TEACHING SANITATION TO THE WOELD 

WHEN the final measure is taken of the 
accomplishments of the present generation 
in which the people of the United States 
have played important parts, precedence will, in all 
probability, be given to the work of sanitation with 
particular reference to the work done in the tropics. 

Those fifteen years that followed the Spanish 
American War may well be set down in history as the 
era of sanitation. The science of preventing disease 
developed more in that brief span than in the two 
centuries that had preceded it. It developed more 
because of the activities of men of medicine in the 
employ of the United States government than 
because of all the efforts of all other men of all other 
nations combined. 

It fell to the lot of the men of the Medical Corps 
of the Army, particularly, to be the instruments in 
bringing about such revolutions in the methods of 
preventing and treating disease as the world had 
never before known. Because of their efforts the 
world to-day stands unafraid in the presence of that 
plague of the tropics, yellow fever, which had run 
riot perennially in equatorial climes and had con- 
stituted an ever-present source of dread in temperate 

213 



214 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

ports through each recurring summer. Because of 
their efforts typhoid fever, a world- spread disease of 
great fatality, was first deprived of the secret of its 
transmission and, ten years later, utterly routed 
through vaccination. An army doctor discovered 
that the languor of many millions of peoples of the 
tropics was due to the presence of the hookworm and 
demonstrated the simplicity of a cure that would 
bring those people back to lustiness. It was these 
army doctors who showed the world through most 
spectacular demonstrations that tropical cities, 
regarded as pest holes of contagion, might be made 
as safe to live in as Paris or Washington, and there- 
fore pointed the way by which the ban might be 
removed. It was the men of the army medical 
corps who shamed those European nations that have 
governed colonies in the tropics for two centuries 
and allowed disease to run on unchecked. For the 
United States had been in the tropics not a decade 
when it had demonstrated more results in battling 
disease than all Europe had been able to show in 
300 years. 

The demonstration of which is but another of 
those many reasons why the American should be 
proud of his citizenship and should stand uncovered 
when the flag flings out. For that flag is a bene- 
diction that brings unto the people beneath it 
definite, appreciable blessings which are none too 
well understood or there would be more men at the 
polls on election day. 



TEACHING SANITATION 215 

It all began when three army doctors got their 
heads together in a barracks for American soldiers 
at Pinar del Rio, 102 miles from Havana, in the year 
1900. The fortunes of the Spanish- American War 
had forced American soldiers into the tropics. 
There they had contracted tropical diseases of 
which our surgeons knew little. But soldiers were 
sick and the men responsible for their health refused 
to accept such a condition as being final. To be 
sure the great nations of the world possessing colo- 
nies in the tropics had done so. The United States 
refused to play a similar role. It had designated 
these three men to find the secrets of yellow fever 
and the methods of stamping it out. 

The story of Drs. Walter Reed, James Carroll and 
Jesse W. Lazear, has been told many times. All 
other theories of yellow fever having been exploded, 
they were here to determine the truth or fallacy 
of that which held that the disease was transmitted 
by mosquitoes. There was yellow fever in the 
barracks. Mosquitoes under observation should 
bite the patients and should then bite well men. 
The result would prove or disprove the theory. 

There was, of course, great danger to the persons 
subjecting themselves to these experiments. The 
doctors decided that, before calling for volunteers, 
they should subject themselves to the ordeal. In 
this way it happened that Dr. Carroll was the first 
individual developing yellow fever from the bite of 
a captive mosquito which had been allowed to bite 



216 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

a patient. He was stricken and successfully ran the 
gauntlet to recovery. Dr. Lazear sat in the yellow 
fever ward during the illness of Dr. Carroll. A 
mosquito alighted upon his hand and the experi- 
menter allowed it to drink its fill of his blood. As 
he watched, the little insect wrote his death warrant, 
for he came down with a virulent attack and died in 
most terrible agony. So were the first two bits of 
corroboratory evidence obtained. 

Drs. Reed and Carroll built two lumber shacks 
and pitched a row of army tents on a Cuban hillside 
where they might carry on further experiments free 
from outside influences. The station they named 
Camp Lazear. From troops at Pinar del Rio they 
asked for volunteers for the mosquito experiments. 
All these troopers knew of the fate of Dr. Lazear and 
the dangers of death that lay in the work. Yet 
there was no dearth of men ready for the possible 
sacrifice. John R. Kissinger and John J. Moran, 
two healthy youngsters from Ohio, were selected 
as subjects. They were told of the monetary re- 
ward that awaited them and refused it. They 
faced the death for humanity's sake. 

Kissinger was bitten by mosquitoes, contracted 
the disease but recovered. Moran's r61e was to 
sleep in the beds and clothing of men who had 
suffered yellow fever, who had died from it, and so to 
determine whether it could be transmitted in that 
way. He failed to contract the disease in twenty 
days spent in one of the shacks well supplied with 



TEACHING SANITATION 217 

such articles. He later took it from the bite of a 
mosquito. So were the facts worked out. 

This information threw the first real light upon 
the proper methods of battling the disease. The 
quarantine authorities of this nation, for instance, 
had depended upon fumigating clothing and effects 
which were thus shown incapable of transmitting 
the disease. Since 1793, when yellow fever raged 
in Philadelphia, there had been 100,000 recorded 
deaths from it in this country, and all the seaport 
cities had suffered. New Orleans alone had lost 
40,000 people, while in Memphis there were 8,000 
deaths in the outbreak of 1879 alone. The appear- 
ance of the disease was constantly expected at all the 
Gulf ports. The financial loss due to the interfer- 
ence with business on account of quarantines was 
enormous. The outbreak of 1879 was estimated as 
causing a financial loss of $100,000,000. All tropical 
America was constantly at the mercy of the disease 
and knew no way of fighting it. It was into a 
situation of this sort that the discovery of Reed, 
Carroll, and Lazear precipitated itself. 

Havana had always been the chief point of infec- 
tion for the United States. In that city there had 
not been a year or a month for a century and a half 
that yellow fever had not been known to be present. 
There had been, during all that time, an average of a 
death every day from the disease. 

At that time Colonel W. C. Gorgas, who was later 
to become sanitary officer for the Panama Canal, 



218 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

still later to be made Surgeon General of the United 
States and who was to earn the reputation of being 
the world's greatest sanitarian, was the health 
officer for Cuba under the American occupation. 
It therefore fell to the lot of Colonel Gorgas to make 
the first fight against yellow fever in the light of the 
demonstration of the mosquito theory. 

Colonel Gorgas confesses that, while he had 
witnessed the demonstrations of Reed and Carroll 
and was convinced that the mosquito carried the 
disease, he was by no means convinced that it was 
the only method of transmission. He had already 
been in Havana for three years and that city had 
been made a clean and wholesome community. 
This cleaning up had, however, failed to have any 
effect upon yellow fever. So, in 1901, he added to 
his other sanitary measures a campaign against 
mosquitoes, expecting thereby merely to reduce the 
disease. He was amply provided with means and 
the fight was most thorough. The work began in 
January which is the period of least danger from 
the disease. There were seven deaths that month. 
In February there were five. In March there was 
but one death. Then came April, May and June 
with no deaths. For the three months that followed 
there were two deaths each. Then yellow fever 
passed. The months that succeeded showed no 
cases in the city. No one was more surprised at the 
absolute result than was Colonel Gorgas. There 
were no conditions in the methods of sanitation 



TEACHING SANITATION 219 

that were different from the three years previous 
except the mosquito campaign. Mosquitoes alone 
were thus shown responsible for the disease. So 
was demonstrated to the world for the first time the 
possibility of ridding a tropical city of this dread 
disease through a campaign that meant the doing 
away with the mosquito. 

When Colonel Gorgas went to Havana he found 
that out of each thousand of the population ninety- 
one persons died every year. This is a frightfully 
high death rate from the standpoint of a city in the 
temperate zone, but the municipalities in the tropics 
had come to accept it as a matter of fact. Within 
a year the death rate had been decreased to thirty- 
three per thousand and in 1902 the death rate was 
down to twenty per thousand. This means that 
four and a half times as many people were dying 
each year before the Americans took hold of the 
health affairs of the city as four years later. Some 
of this decrease was due to the passing of yellow 
fever but much of it was because of the absence of 
other diseases under sanitary conditions. So was an 
object lesson given to all the tropical cities of the 
world. 

Had it not been for this demonstration it is doubt- 
ful if the United States would ever have undertaken 
the construction of the Panama Canal. But for 
this demonstration it would probably never have 
been possible to build it even if undertaken. But 
for the ability to control yellow fever the ships of 



220 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

the world would not dare use the canal after its 
completion. So may it be shown that the existence 
of the Panama Canal is a direct outgrowth of this 
work of sanitation. 

At Panama it has been possible to show the possi- 
bilities of sanitation more strikingly than they could 
ever have been set forth under any conditions that 
have ever existed. The eyes of the world have 
been on Panama. Had the same sanitary principles 
been demonstrated in Philadelphia or Omaha they 
might almost have escaped notice. But the miracle 
had been worked in the very spotlight of the world, 
and no tropical community may remain a pest hole 
of contamination without knowingly calling down 
upon itself the condemnation of all men. Likewise 
can no tropical American port profit from the 
opportunities of commerce afforded by the Canal 
unless it makes itself sanitary, for ships from un- 
heathful ports will be quarantined against. 

Colonel Gorgas was sent to Panama for the great 
task. This was in 1904. The building of the Canal 
was then going through the painful ordeal of being 
directed by a commission of divided authority 
which was showing itself most ineffective in many 
ways, one of these being insufficient support to the 
sanitary officer. So it happened that yellow fever 
ran riot there during 1905 to such an extent that 
panic was abroad. There were but forty-seven 
deaths but these were sufficient to call into question 



TEACHING SANITATION 221 

the mosquito theory of yellow fever and the practi- 
cability of ever accomplishing the great task. 

Then came the military control of the Zone and 
added authority and support of the chief sanitary 
officer. Colonel Gorgas was given full sway and 
through the period that followed spent an average 
of $400,000 a year for sanitation. Panama and 
Colon were given the same treatment that had been 
accorded to Havana and were converted into new 
demonstrations of the possibility of making tropical 
cities healthful. Throughout the whole zone vast 
quantities of mosquito-harboring brush and grass 
were cut, swampy lands were ditched and drained 
until there was the least possible amount of standing 
water. At the head of every little stream on the 
Zone was set a can of oil which dripped constantly. 
This stream carried the oil on its surface as a thin 
skum throughout its course. This means death to 
the larvae of the mosquito, for it keeps it from 
coming to the surface for air. Wherever these 
streams could not be induced to distribute their 
own oil, and there was need for it, men went with 
sprinkling-cans. Altogether 150,000 gallons of mos- 
quito oil were used in the course of a year. In the 
end control was gained and kept through such a 
period of years as to make the proof absolute. 

But in the meantime other equally important 
work along different lines was being done elsewhere. 
The Spanish- American War brought also under the 
flag the Philippine Islands, When the sanitary 



222 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

officers went over with the troops in 1898 they found 
Manila to be a city of 300,000 people but with no 
more sanitation than European cities boasted in the 
sixteenth century. Under Spanish control a down- 
trodden race had been kept in ignorance and given 
no encouragement to lift itself from the slough of 
despondency and the filth of its own poor life. For 
centuries these people had dwelt in the midst of the 
disease-breeding refuse of their own creation. 
Among them ran uncontrolled such diseases as 
bubonic plague, smallpox, leprosy, Asiatic cholera. 

One of the first great fights in Manila was the 
eradication of bubonic plague, and the manner of 
its accomplishment proved an object lesson to this 
part of the world. The American men of medicine 
knew that the disease was carried only by fleas that 
lived on rats, and Manila was the seat of a campaign 
against these rodents that accomplished much more 
than their killing, for it meant the cleaning up of the 
entire city. The coming of Asiatic cholera meant a 
stubborner fight, for the natives remembered its 
previous visit when as many as 30,000 people had 
died in Manila in a single day. The terror of the 
natives was as hard to overcome as the disease. 
Then there were thousands of lepers to be gathered 
up and made comfortable on the island of Culion 
where their disease would die with them. Beriberi, 
a native disease, ran riot throughout the island and 
everywhere claimed its toll. It was finally cured 
by a dietary system, the chief point in which was 



TEACHING SANITATION 223 

so simple a thing as the substitution of rough for 
polished rice. In Manila a sanitary water supply 
and a method of disposal of refuse were the first 
necessities, and from this central point the good- 
water idea spread until scores of smaller centers 
were supplied with artesian wells that decreased the 
death rate by half. In the end Manila was given 
practically the only modern sewer system in all the 
Orient and thereby made a demonstration plant 
to half the world. For here is another tropical 
city that has become as healthy as are others of its 
kind in America or in Europe. 

Yet another world-important development of the 
first half decade after the Spanish- American War was 
registered by another young doctor of the medical 
corps of the army, Major Bailey K. Ashford. Dr. 
Ashford was assigned to service in Porto Rico and 
turned up the fact that the long pitied "jibaros," 
these poor people of the country districts, cursed and 
despised through the centuries because of a great 
languor attributed to laziness, were in reality 
suffering from a little known disease which he ex- 
plained to the world. Their systems were full of the 
hookworm, later found to be so prevalent among 
the "poor whites" of the southern states of Amer- 
ica. They were men half of whose blood had been 
stolen and whose lives ran at such low ebb that 
to them existence was a misery and labor all but 
impossible. 

The Spanish had not known that these, their 



224 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

descendants, were so diref ully afflicted. The French 
nor English nor Portuguese nor Dutch, nor any of 
the other nations with tropical colonies, knew that 
among these subject people the germ of languor was 
abroad and that it was converting whole races that 
might otherwise be strong and vigorous into 
miserable drones. Yet Ashford went among these 
people to relieve their distress from hurricane in 
August of 1899, and in November of the same year 
reported the discovery of the secret of all their 
misery, the presence of a disease causing the death 
of 1,000 of them each month, and 30 per cent, of all 
the deaths on the island. 

Major Ashford went further and showed that this 
disease had been brought from Africa when the 
Spaniards had imported negro slaves after exter- 
minating, through their cruelties, the natives of the 
islands. In fact Africa was alive with undiscovered 
hookworm. Dr. Charles Wad dell Styles, of the 
Public Health Service, soon after found millions of 
native Americans to be suffering from the same 
anemia. It was present in Central America, in the 
Philippines, the Orient, the world around. It was 
eventually shown that the majority of the people 
of the world who live in warm climates and go bare- 
foot were devitalized by the disease. The lazy 
indolence of the tropics, emphasized since man began 
to generalize, is being shown to be more largely a 
fact because of the presence of the hookworm than 
because of any effect of climate. 



TEACHING SANITATION 225 

Major Ashford did not stop with the discovery of 
the hookworm in Porto Rico. With his government 
back of him he proceeded to its cure. He devel- 
oped the exact dosage of thymol that would rid the 
human system of these parasites and the method 
of its administration that it might be least harmful 
to the system. The cure was proved effective in 
great numbers of cases and the machinery was built 
up for its administration to masses of people. By 
hundreds of thousands were they treated in Porto 
Rico until the plague of the island was gradually 
lessened and pressed toward eradication, the result 
being a revivified people capable of and willing to 
earn its living in the tilling of a fertile soil. 

So is another object lesson given to the world 
which is being followed all too slowly in other 
tropical lands that are suffering as did Porto Rico. 

The traveler in Cuba, Porto Rico, and Philippine, 
in the years that followed the acquisition of interests 
in those Islands on the part of the United States, 
was always impressed with the disfigurement of the 
faces of the peoples living therein by the pits of 
smallpox which they had suffered. The deeply 
marked face was the rule rather than the exception 
and the disease was always to be found among the 
people. No sooner had the medical corps of the 
army reached Cuba and Porto Rico than it saw the 
advisability of protecting an unknowing people from 
all this unnecessary suffering. These men go 
brusquely about obtaining results, for they have too 



226 UNCMTSAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

well demonstrated their right to leadership in these 
matters to brook interference. 

In Cuba, during the occupation, the order went 
forth that every individual should be vaccinated. 
The order was so well executed that smallpox 
immediately disappeared from the island, and in the 
thirteen years that followed but seven deaths were 
reported from it. A similar period of years pre- 
ceding showed 5,355 deaths from smallpox. In 
Porto Rico the disease was found present in twenty 
places on the island and similar action was taken. 
A million people were vaccinated within a few weeks 
and the disease has not since given any trouble. 
In the Philippines smallpox ran riot until the men 
of medicine sent forth vaccinating expeditions, the 
first of which applied the serum to 600,000 people 
to the north of Manila and others performed similar 
tasks. 

The children of the natives of these islands have 
skins as smooth as velvet and the time of disfigure- 
ment will never come to them. 

Of all this pioneer work in sanitation that with 
reference to yellow fever is generally considered of 
first importance. It stands out most distinctly 
as a clean cut job completed in a short length of 
time and opening up immediate possibility es. There 
is one other, however, that was begun before the 
yellow fever work but not completed until ten years 
later, that may dispute in world importance the 
work with yellow jack. 



TEACHING SANITATION <m 

This is typhoid fever. Here is a complaint that 
affects all the people between the poles and that 
levies its tribute in all lands. Since war began it 
has caused the death of more men in the ranks than 
have conflicts with the enemy or than has any other 
disease. Like camp fever, and prison fever it has 
weakened contending armies more rapidly than were 
they able to cause each other distress. 

Yet as recently as the Spanish- American War 
typhoid fever was little understood. Like those 
other great advances in medical science, the control 
of typhoid dates from that conflict. Like many of 
them it has gained its great impulses from the 
medical corps of the army. 

Of all the men who died during the Spanish Ameri- 
can War 86 per cent, owed their demise to typhoid 
fever. In 90 per cent, of the camps of soldiers 
during that conflict, typhoid fever appeared within 
eight weeks after they were established. One man 
in every five of those participating in the war suf- 
fered from typhoid. Six times as many men died 
of it as from Spanish bullets. 

Here was shown to be another great need of 
effective work for the eradication of the common 
enemy. It was a task that had baffled the armies 
of the world through all time and to which Ameri- 
cans had surrendered in past wars. But America 
had come into her own and stood ready to attack 
formerly impossible tasks. 

Three surgeons, Drs. Walter Reed, Victor C. 



£28 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

Vaughan, and Edward 0. Shakespeare, were sent 
into Florida as a commission to get to the heart of 
the cause of the spread of this disease and to point 
the way to prevention. Previously there had been 
the fairly well proved theory that the disease was 
distributed through contaminated water or milk. 
This theory still stands but these army doctors 
added one other fact to it which has been shown to 
be of vastly greater importance. The housefly 
is vastly more important as a distributer of the 
disease than is any other agency. Wherever it 
encounters the refuse from the sick room it is prone 
to gather the germs thereof upon its feet and fly 
away. Then, wherever it alights, it plants the 
germs and a new infection may be started. This 
discovery showed the importance of disposal of 
refuse and of campaigns for the eradication of the 
housefly, measures that went far toward keeping 
down the disease. 

Ten years passed before the second step in the 
typhoid war was taken. It was in 1908 that the 
War Department ordered Major Frederick F. 
Russell, of the medical corps, to go abroad and study 
the experiments that were being made in England 
and Germany in the matter of vaccination against 
typhoid. In Europe Dr. Russell found that these 
governments had, for a decade, been working upon 
the problem of making their soldiers immune 
from typhoid. German regiments in North Africa 
and British regiments in South Africa and India, 



TEACHING SANITATION 229 

had been vaccinated. The means of immunization 
had been the injection of typhoid germs that had 
previously been killed. There were indications of 
benefits so secured and there were negative results. 
The theory had failed of being established but there 
had been flashes of great results. 

Major Russell observed the methods of preparing 
the vaccine on the part of the various experimenters, 
drew conclusions as to what was the best in each 
idea and where each failed. He returned to 
America and produced a vaccine which he believed 
would prove effective. He used it on his laboratory 
staff, upon his associates in the service, upon mem- 
bers of their families and upon whatever other 
persons would offer themselves. None of these 
ever got typhoid afterward. 

Such successful experiments had gone on for three 
years when, in 1911, 20,000 troops were sent into 
camp on the Mexican border. Here were the con- 
ditions under which typhoid usually appeared. 
Here, also, was an opportunity for an experiment 
on a large scale. It was proposed that vaccination 
be made compulsory with these troops, a condition 
that had never been applied in Europe where vac- 
cination was only with the consent of the individual 
soldier. The wholesale vaccination was ordered. 

At Galveston 4,500 men were vaccinated and not 
one case of typhoid appeared among them despite 
its prevalence in the city near by. At San Diego, 
where 3,000 were vaccinated, two cases were re- 



230 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

ported. At San Antonio, where 13,000 troops were 
in camp for four months, there were but two cases 
of typhoid and both these recovered, thus show- 
ing contrasts strongly with the camp at Jacksonville 
in 1898 where, among 10,000 men, there were 2,500 
cases of typhoid and 248 deaths. 

So was the efficacy of typhoid vaccination estab- 
lished. It was proved over and over again in the 
years that followed, for the government vaccinated 
every soldier after 1911. Of the 70,000 to 80,000 
men in the ranks the reports showed that there were 
but one or two or three cases of typhoid for a year 
and this degree of failure in effectiveness of the 
preventative could easily be set down to error in 
administration of the vaccine. 

All these remarkable accomplishments came 
about chiefly through the efforts of the medical 
corps to keep the men under its charge healthy. 
The result that may be secured in the present or the 
future by humanity as a whole is merely incidental. 
If all the world should vaccinate itself against 
typhoid and rule this dread disease off the sphere, 
there would be a vast good come out of a work done 
for the military. The men who engage in these tasks 
always appreciate ultimate possibilities, and the 
well-being of humanity througn all the future is a 
spur sufficient to lead them to any sacrifice. Kiss- 
inger, the young soldier from Ohio who bared his 
arm to the bite of the yellow fever mosquito and 
refused pay for it, had the spirit — the willingness 



TEACHING SANITATION 231 

to go down into the valley of death — that is a part 
of this work. For it is given to few men to be the 
instrument for saving the lives of a million of their 
fellows, but a score of such men have lived in this 
generation and have stood willing to make the 
supreme sacrifice to that end. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

CAPTURING BLACKHANDERS 

THE spirit of Guiseppe Morrello, one time 
chief of the Black Hand, is broken. Lupo 
(the Wolf), the proud and haughty one, the 
carrier of the mandates of the dread society, has 
been seen to throw himself upon his face in despair 
and weep. The gang that gathered about them is 
dispersed, broken in fragments, and without a head. 
For not only have their chiefs been sent to federal 
prisons, but along with them eight most active 
lieutenants. 

So was broken up an organization that terrorized 
half of the United States, a gang at the door of which 
are laid such crimes as the notorious " barrel 
murder" in New York and the assassination of 
Lieutenant Petrosino in Italy. So are removed the 
men who have dominated thousands of Italian- 
Americans through fear, and are believed to have 
collected tribute in a thousand cases. So are 
demonstrated the methods and the results of the 
members of Uncle Sam's Secret Service in its con- 
stant battle against the most wily criminals of the 
age, from whom it seeks to protect the peaceful 
citizen. 

232 



CAPTURING BLACKHANDERS 233 

The crime of counterfeiting was at last proved 
against these men. For a decade they escaped 
punishment largely through intimidating witnesses. 
But now they are in prison, for long terms in every 
case. So ended a romance of lawlessness which has 
but few parallels in the history of the nation. 

"The Black Hand," John E. Wilkie, then chief 
of the Secret Service, told me at the time, "was 
dealt the severest blow in all its American history 
when the Federal Court in New York City, in 1910, 
sentenced to prison eight Italians charged with 
counterfeiting. In so doing it broke up a gang of 
counterfeiters that had been giving trouble for ten 
years. But it did more. It cut the very heart out 
of the best organized gang that has ever used Black 
Hand methods on this side of the ocean. 

" Guiseppe Morrello, leader of these counterfeiters, 
was, contrary to general belief, the chief of a gang 
that was, I believe, responsible for 60 per cent, 
of the Black Hand extortion that had gone on in 
the United States in the ten years previous. 

"Lupo, who received sentence for counterfeiting 
at the same time, and was generally considered the 
chief of the Black Handers, was in reality but a tool 
of Morrello and his outside man. Cina, Calicchio, 
Sylvestre, Giglio, Palermo, and Cecala were the 
intimate associates of these and the men nearest 
them in all their activities. 

"The year before, fourteen others had been sent 
up for passing counterfeit money. They were 



234 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

lesser stars in the same notorious constellation. 
With twenty- two of the leading members of this 
gang behind the bars, the country experienced a 
lull in the so-called Black Hand operations." 

The sentencing of the Morrello gang was the last 
act in a blood-spilling melodrama that had been 
running for ten years. In it Morrello and Lupo 
played parts that would be hard to exaggerate. 
In it "Old Sleuth" in the guise of the Secret Service 
men was ever on the trail of the criminals. 

In it there was murder, blackmail, kidnapping, 
extortion, counterfeiting, and fraud in a thousand 
phases. The bold outlaw laughed his stage "Ha, 
Ha!" defiantly in the face of the authorities. The 
red bandanna of the bandit chief appeared, and 
death followed. 

The death sign was passed to witnesses on the 
stand, and they became mute. 

As the curtain went down on the last scene, the 
leader's proud spirit was broken with the contempla- 
tion of the cold, dark cell as a future domicile, and 
he broke down and wept in an abandonment of 
grief. 

Guiseppe Morrello first came under the surveil- 
lance of the Secret Service when in 1900 there ap- 
peared on the east side of New York a flood of 
counterfeit money. This had been passed upon 
small shopkeepers at many places. As nightfall 
approached and the lamps in these abodes of econ- 
omy were not yet lighted, a mild-mannered Italian 



CAPTURING BLACKHANDERS 235 

would make a small purchase for which he would 
pay in a supposed Treasury five-dollar note, getting 
the change. Under a stronger light the money 
was found to be counterfeit. 

This was the first entrance of the Italian- American 
into the field of counterfeiting. The Secret Service 
knew little of their haunts. A force of picked men 
was put on the case, and before long the scent led 
to the resort of Morrello in Elizabeth Street. Var- 
ious trails converged there. The resort was raided, 
Morrello arrested and charged with the crime. 
There was proof, but not sufficient for conviction. 
Morrello was released, kept under surveillance. 

It was in 1902 that the Morristown fives ap- 
peared, so called from the fact that they were 
counterfeits of the issue of a bank in that town. 
The Secret Service men discovered, because of cer- 
tain peculiarities that appeared, that these notes 
were of Italian origin. The touch of the origi- 
nator of any article will be left on it somewhere. 
It was the sons of Italy who were passing the 
money. 

In tracing them the trails of the previous case were 
crossed. They pointed toward Morrello. They 
also led past the Customs House, and it was through 
the officials of that service that the manner of the 
introduction of the bills was discovered. 

Olive oil, under the tariff laws, may come in by 
barrel at a less rate than in the cans. Therefore, 
it is imported in bulk, and the Italian cans are 



236 UNCLE SAM'S MODEEN MIEACLES 

brought in empty for its retailing after landing. 
Their suspicion being aroused by these empty cans, 
the Secret Service men went at them with their 
can openers. They found bales of counterfeit 
money in them. Morrello and some of his associ- 
ates were arrested, but the evidence was not strong 
enough for conviction. 

It is here that the plot begins to thicken, for we 
approach the famous " barrel murder," one of the 
strangest cases that the Police Department of New 
York has ever had to deal with, and one of those 1 
on which it had to pronounce itself beaten, although 
morally certain it knew who the criminals were. 

A certain Italian who had been an associate of 
Morrello and a suspect in the counterfeit money 
cases was sent to prison on some other charge. He 
left a family that was in great need. Morrello 
owed him money. He sent his wife's brother, 
young Modino, to see Morrello. 

Modino was instructed to say to Morrello that 
if the debt was not paid the man in prison would 
tell all he knew. Here the character of Morrello 
begins to develop. He flung back a defiance, and 
in such a way that it will long be remembered in the 
Italian quarter. 

Modino was seen to leave the establishment of 
Morrello late in the afternoon. With him was one 
Petto, commonly known as "The Bull." Lupo 
also came into the case, having been seen at the 
Morrello establishment at about the same time. 



CAPTURING BLACKHANDERS 237 

That night Morrello appeared on the streets of the 
Italian quarter with his head swathed in a red 
bandanna in the best accredited bandit style. 
Modino was never again seen alive. The next 
morning his body was found in a barrel with a score 
of knife thrusts in his breast. 

In this case the Secret Service was of great assist- 
ance to the police. They knew every man belong 
ing to the Morrello gang and were familiar with 
the movements of all of them. Although their 
object in gathering this information was to prevent 
counterfeiting, they waived any advantage that 
secrecy might give them and placed their informa- 
tion in the hands of the police. Morrello, Petto 
the Bull, and Lupo were all arrested, but it was 
not possible to get sufficient evidence to convict 
them. 

The oftener Morrello was arrested the more 
insolent be became. By this time he had come to 
sneer at the police, and dictate whatever orders he 
saw fit to the Italians he had come to dominate. 
A rough and hard-faced scoundrel, he sat in his 
office and sent out his orders. 

A maimed hand interfered with him as an outside 
man, so he did the thinking and ordered others 
to execute his plans. He had discovered by this 
time the advantages that attached to the dread 
name of the Black Hand for extortion purposes. It 
is believed by the Secret Service men who watched 
him for ten years that he was responsible for the 



238 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

greater part of such extortion as far west as Chicago 
and as far south as New Orleans. 

Lupo was the active outside man, who carried his 
mandates. Because of his being more seen than 
his chief, Lupo came to be popularly regarded as the 
head of the Black Hand, but in reality he was only 
its outward evidence. The mind that directed it, 
the Secret Service men believe, was that of the 
maimed Morrello. 

Petto, "The Bull," who was suspected of being 
the direct agent in the "barrel murder," was a 
compatriot of Lupo, and probably ranked as high 
in the estimate of his master. He was a man who 
could be depended upon to execute a desperate 
mission. But he was overbold in one of these, and 
so came to his death. 

He demanded, in the name of the Black Hand, a 
large sum of money from an Italian merchant in 
Scranton, Pennsylvania, supposedly at the direction 
of Morrello. He appointed a time and place for the 
delivery of the money. The merchant kept the 
engagement, but instead of giving Petto the money, 
gave him a load of buckshot from a sawed-off shot- 
gun. Petto expired on the spot. 

It was at about this stage of his career that Mor- 
rello appeared in another of the most spectacular 
incidents of his life. Word was brought to him 
that a certain associate who was believed to have 
handled counterfeit money in connection with him, 
operating in New Orleans, had been talking freely. 



CAPTURING BLACKHANDERS 239 

It is said that he had gone so far as to threaten to 
expose the Morrello operations. 

The chief immediately went to New Orleans in 
person. He was seen among the Italians of that 
city for three or four days. Finally, one afternoon, 
in true bandit style, he appeared again on the streets 
with a red bandanna handkerchief about his head. 
That night the offending Italian was found dead in 
his store with a score of knife thrusts in his breast 
very much like those received by the victim of the 
"barrel murder. " The direct evidence was again 
lacking upon which to convict the dreaded visitor. 
Yet the Italians of all the country took this stabbing 
as they had the " barrel murder," as a warning not 
to defy the authority of the big chief. 

The next crime of which the Morrello gang was 
suspected was the murder in Italy of Lieutenant 
Petrosino, the man of all the sleuths of the New 
York police force they most feared. 

There has never been any admissible evidence to 
show that Morrello had any connection with this 
crime. It was shown at the time, however, that 
the business of Petrosino in Italy was to investigate 
the past of the members of this gang. Such 
evidence was being unearthed as that which showed 
that Lupo had fled Italy because of a murder he had 
committed. It was also known that members of 
the Morrello gang were in the vicinity of Palermo 
when the murder was committed. 

Then begins the final chapter of the operations of 



£40 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

the gang, the chapter in which, because of the cour- 
age of a despised supposed weakling, known among 
his fellows as "The Lamb/' the men who had 
spread terror throughout the nation were brought 
finally to felons' cells. 

In 1909 counterfeit money began to appear in 
New York, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Balti- 
more, and other cities. It was all of the same kind 
and all handled by Italians. On the face of it, 
there was evidently a well-organized gang that was 
spreading this false money broadcast. 

So efficient had become the Secret Service drag 
built up by that most efficient operative in charge, 
W. J. Flynn, that it succeeded in gathering in and 
convicting fourteen of the men who were passing 
the money. But the men at the head of the plot 
were still hard to reach. This difficulty lay largely 
in the fact that all of their countrymen who as- 
sociated with them were so intimidated that they 
would go to prison in silence rather than disclose 
the source of the bad money, for to do so meant 
death. 

But finally the man was found who had the direct 
evidence and was willing to give it. This individual 
was Antonio Comito, "The Lamb." Comito had 
long been the unwilling tool of the gang. He had 
been so timid and inoffensive that the villainous 
crew regarded him as putty in their hands. Had 
they not tamed the proud spirits of many of their 
courageous and naturally upright countrymen? 



CAPTURING BLACKHANDERS 241 

Why should they fear this spiritless weakling? 
Yet Comito was the instrument which sent the 
dictator and practically all his intimates to the 
penitentiary. 

Comito told his own story on the witness stand 
in the Federal Court. The eight outlaws, most 
dreaded among their countrymen of all those that 
the Italian quarter had ever known, sat in the 
prisoner's box, and "The Lamb" turned his head 
away while he testified, for he had not the courage 
to face them. He said he knew that he was to be 
killed for what he was doing, but that it were better 
to die than live so miserably. 

While the trial progressed the Federal Building 
became filled almost to bursting with low-browed, 
ill-kept, dangerous looking Italians. The authori- 
ties became alarmed, and Secret Service men and 
Deputy Marshals were brought into the building. 
About the corridors these alert men of the law 
walked continually and dispersed dark-faced rascals 
who got together in whispered conversation. The 
witness was constantly surrounded by guards, and 
when he was taken to and from the courtroom, it 
was between ranks of deputy marshals. One morn- 
ing Marshal Henkel found a long dagger sticking 
in his door, obviously as a warning of the fate that 
might await the enemies of the accused. 

But despite all this, Comito, "The Lamb," went 
forward with his testimony, harassed by lawyers 
that the accused were able to retain. Three times 



242 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

did the Secret Service men see some Italian in the 
room give the death sign, the thing most dreaded 
by the sons of Italy, and usually sufficient to close 
their mouths against any further utterance. 

This sign is given by raising the closed hand to 
the mouth biting the knuckle of the first finger, 
and turning the action off by running the finger 
around the edge of the collar. Comito would falter 
and almost faint at such times, but his story went 
forward to the end and was substantiated by such 
additional evidence as to establish its unquestioned 
truth. 

Comito said that in October, 1908, he met Cecala, 
one of the accused. Comito was well educated and 
a printer. Cecala offered him a job, saying that 
it was in Philadelphia. They went to the river 
front at night and took a boat. They disembarked 
at a point which Comito later learned was Highlands, 
N. J. They went to a farm rented by Cina, and 
there he was held prisoner for months. 

There he operated a printing press and produced 
great quantities of spurious money. From there 
he returned to New York with members of the gang 
on shopping tours. Their purchases were verified 
by many merchants. 

Then came Morrello, Lupo, and other members 
of the gang. Their visits were likewise verified. 
There the counterfeit money was dealt out and the 
profits divided. Three thousand five-dollar cer- 
tificates Comito produced, and many twos and ones. 




GUISEPPE MORELLO, CHIEF OF THE BLACK HAND 




DUTCH BOYS 



CAPTURING BLACKHANDERS 243 

In all he printed $46,000 in money while held a 
prisoner. 

When the evidence was all in the verdict was in- 
evitable. When the men received their sentences, 
the least fifteen years, and the greatest, that of 
Lupo, thirty years, there was an ominous hush in 
the courtroom. The men who watched within 
and who waited in the halls seemed to expect some 
mighty demonstration on the part of their dreaded 
chiefs. For had not these men defied the power of 
America for all these years and had they not re- 
moved those who opposed them? 

The confidence of the intimidated horde was 
greatly shaken when Morrello, the chief, and Lupo, 
"The Wolf," threw themselves on the floor and 
howled in terror. They were at last overcome. 
Their spirits were broken. A vigilant and benevo- 
lent government had again served the people who 
go to make it by removing from among them these 
individuals who interfered with their privilege 
of the pursuit of happiness granted them by its 
constitution. 



CHAPTER XIX 

PREPARING FOR POSSIBLE WARS 

WERE there a war with Germany and 
were the troops of the nation to pene- 
trate within ten miles of Berlin, they 
would be in possession of information so exact that 
their guns could be so trained as to demolish the 
emperor's palace or any other building in the city, 
despite the fact that those structures were entirely 
beyond the range of their vision. The gunners could 
work in the dark, shoot over high hills. They 
would nevertheless hit the mark. 

Their guns would be sighted in accordance with 
war college maps, made years previously. They 
would be surer of hitting the mark than if the 
gunners were looking at it. They would know 
every hillock, brook and plain in all the region 
roundabout, and they would have at their command 
the mathematics of applied gunnery, one of the most 
remarkable of sciences. 

Were the exigencies of war to require that an army 
be landed at Port Arthur, conveyed across Siberia 
and attack St. Petersburg, the war college would 
know the detail of every stage of the advance, how 
troops could be conveyed, where camps should be 

£44 



PREPARING FOR POSSIBLE WARS 245 

made, where provisions could be got. The road 
from the Rio Grande to Mexico City would be as 
plain to them as the streets from your home to your 
place of business. Were war to break out between 
this country and any nation on earth that is worthy 
of the steel of the United States, the information 
would be in hand to show how we might best attack 
that country or resist an attack by it. 

For the United States maintains an institution 
the business of which is to know how to pass from a 
state of peace to a state of war. The most secret, 
the least known of its institutions is that vital link 
in the great military chain, the War College. And 
the business of the War College is to see to it that 
the people of this nation are not placed at a disad- 
vantage should the supreme emergency arise. 

The War College is a school where grizzled 
veterans, surfeited with experience, come to get that 
refinement of training that would enable them to 
efficiently handle an army in actual combat. It is, 
further, the repository of the secret military infor- 
mation of the nation. It is intrusted with the 
gathering of this information and the guarding of it. 
There are secrets hidden in its archives that you or I 
could sell for millions to other nations, if we knew 
them and if we had in us the hearts of traitors. It 
is the goal of the ambition of every man who goes 
to war. It is the last word in military affairs in the 
western hemisphere. 

The War College came into existence when Elihu 



246 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

Root was Secretary of War. It is his child. He 
made possible the thing that the big men of the 
army had been demanding for fifty years. The 
War College building is a monument to Mr. Root. 
Its corner stone was laid by him in 1903 and the 
building was completed some two years later. The 
first demonstration of the advantage of this intellec- 
tual center for war operations was had when the 
army was mobilized at Fort Sam Houston in 1911, 
in such short time as to cause the nation to gasp. 
The clockwork shuttling of troops to Vera Cruz 
in 1914 with never a hitch was a further evidence 
of efficiency on a large scale. There is developing 
a realization of the fact that the nation is on a dif- 
ferent war basis than that of 1898 and the wise 
ones say that the War College is largely responsible 
for the difference. So what of the War College? 

In the first place it is a school. The students are 
mostly men between forty and fifty years of age. 
There are but twenty-three men in each year's 
class. These are colonels, lieutenant colonels, ma- 
jors, captains. They are the selected fittest men 
in all the army. The process of elimination has 
been operating for twenty years in their selection. 
It began in the first of the four years at West 
Point. 

This elimination continued through the three 
years of garrison school at the various posts at which 
the young officers were stationed. It was in opera- 
tion when the officers passed through the year of 



PREPARING FOR POSSIBLE WARS 247 

the school of the line. Finally it was working 
regularly when the well-advanced officers got to 
the army's staff college. Everywhere the unfit for 
high military preferment were eliminated. Every- 
where there was the search for the military genius. 
Finally the twenty-three fittest were selected and 
the stiffest test of efficiency and genius for war of 
them all wa s applied. The officers were put through 
the War College. 

The men who make good at the War College have 
the final chance at that small and exclusive aggrega- 
tion of final war authorities, the general staff. 
There are some fifty men on the general staff. 
They are the general advisors of the chief of staff, 
the Secretary of War, and the President. When a 
war emergency arises the President asks the Secre- 
tary of War for advice. The Secretary asks the 
chief of staff and the chief of staff appeals to this 
general staff. They are the military experts of the 
nation. They are the men who do the actual work. 
Their recommendations, after the approval of the 
officials higher up has been attached, guide all army 
operations, fight all wars. 

When the officer comes to the War College he 
knows all the detail of army life and is ripe with the 
experience of the field. He has, however, never 
commanded an army. He is to be fitted to take 
charge of the biggest army that the nation may be 
called upon to muster in time of war and fight 
battles with it. It is to be determined whether or 



248 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

not he is of the stuff that would rise to such an 
emergency. He is to be intrusted with the secret 
information in the nation's greatest storehouse of 
secrets. 

His instructors are the country's greatest war 
authorities. These officers are selected because of 
special ability to lecture on special subjects and to 
sit in judgment upon the work of the student 
officers. 

A typical class lesson may be something like the 
following : 

The officer is placed theoretically in command of 
an army on the march. A map is shown which 
gives the position of his supposed command. It is 
a war map; that is to say, a topographical map 
giving all the details as to the nature of the country. 
His army is in extended formation. He receives a 
message by courier to the effect that he is about to 
be attacked on the flank. He is asked to call his 
officers together and give them the proper com- 
mands to meet that attack. 

At first the officer is given two days to formulate 
his orders. Another situation is evolved and he is 
given a day in which to issue them. Many 
situations are put up to him and the time is always 
reduced. In the end all manner of conditions 
such as might present themselves to the commander 
of an army in the field are brought forward, and he 
is given ten minutes in which to meet them and 
issue his commands. He is to do the thing exactly 



PREPARING FOR POSSIBLE WARS 249 

as it would have to be done were he fighting an 
actual war. He is given only the time he would be 
given under those circumstances. He has to make 
good or he is not deemed a fit man for an important 
command. His orders, scanned by the instructors, 
have to show that his head was clear, his informa- 
tion was correct and his judgment was good, or he 
cannot get past. It is the elimination test still at 
work. 

The manner in which the army gathers con- 
fidential information is one of the most closely 
guarded secrets of the nation. It is not even gen- 
erally known that military attaches at embassies 
and legations are the official spies of the nations 
which they represent. The governments tolerate 
this interchange of spies. The public believes them 
social ornaments attached to the various embassies 
or legations. 

The military attaches of France, for instance, 
wanting any bit of information about a gun of 
this government, would apply to the War Col- 
lege for that information. As a courtesy to a 
friendly nation, we might interchange guns with 
France. This much of the work of the attache 
is above board. He goes about the photograph 
laboratories of the city in which he is situated. He 
buys largely of the views, particularly those around 
any military stronghold. He even gets pictures of 
guns, forts, and navy yards. He secures detail 
maps of the entire country. Our geological survey 



250 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

has probably never made a map that is not now in 
the possession of Germany. 

But the military attache is known to go even 
farther than this. He is often the head of an ex- 
tensive spy system that reaches throughout the 
country in which he is stationed. There are certain 
secrets which his nation wants. Good men and 
true are sent to get those secrets and no questions 
are asked as to method. Where information is to 
be had there it is gotten. The spy system of the 
United States is admittedly much less extensive 
than that of any of the great European countries, 
but it may be taken as an assured fact that when 
the Yankee army wants a bit of information it has 
its methods of getting it. 

An excellent example of the province of the mili- 
tary attache was shown in the Russo-Japanese war. 
When the Russian army went into the east a French 
attache went with it. This attache, representing a 
friendly nation, was given infinite detail as to the 
Russian army. Probably he was given more than 
he should have had. He transmitted this informa- 
tion to his own government by cipher. The 
French government possibly erred in allowing too 
much of this information to get into the hands of 
the newspaper men. The Japanese attache at 
Paris immediately cabled it to his home government 
around the world. Thence it went to the Japanese 
army as it faced the Russians. It helped that 
army to whip its foes. Military attaches sent the 



PREPARING FOR POSSIBLE WARS 251 

information around the world that could not get 
across the ten-mile gap that separated the armies. 

Surrounded with mystery, filled with officials who 
have nothing to say when interviewed, steadily 
acquiring from all possible sources the fullest and 
most accurate information up to the very minute 
of all that the other nations in the world are doing 
in the way of defense and offense, knowing to a man 
the strength and disposal of foreign armies, where 
they are and what they are doing, and learning all 
this and very much more by agencies of which the 
nation that goes calmly to bed at nights never 
dreams, the War College becomes a vital agency of 
the government. 

Let a military problem come up; let it be neces- 
sary to move, feed, clothe, supply guns and am- 
munition to an army or set it to fighting, and then 
this silent, mysterious, powerful agency will have 
plenty to say and will say it in tones that the dullest 
may easily understand. 

A collection of war maps of the United States 
and of foreign countries occupies a harmless enough 
looking place on the list of apparatus of this institu- 
tion, and the mind accepts it as quite necessary and 
natural. But what was the alleged offense for 
which Dreyfus suffered so long on Devil's Island, for 
which his friend Zola went through such a period 
of odium for standing by him and over which the 
entire French nation was almost in the agonies of 
war? Ifc was only the question of a little map or 



252 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

plan of an insignificant place in France that Ger- 
many had got hold of in some mysterious way. 

General information of foreign armies and for- 
tresses finds a place in the work of this course; but 
the data at hand are not quite of the same general 
character that may be found in last year's almanac 
or in an encyclopedia, nor are they derived from 
exactly the same source. Indisputable facts up to 
the very minute is the sort of information that sup- 
plies the data for the thousand and one problems 
of military science upon which the students of the 
War College at Washington work. 

" Information is the first step toward success in 
war," is the great maxim laid down and the one that 
is always uppermost in preparations for war or 
defense. "Find out all that can be found out about 
an enemy's country and movements and keep him 
from finding out about your own," is another way 
in which one of the foremost strategists of the United 
States expresses it. And this information, variously 
acquired, forms the great basis of what are called 
the " confidential archives" of the War College. 

It was reported at the beginning of the mobiliza- 
tion of troops in Texas in 1911, and again in 1914, 
that the War Department had sent down 4,000 
maps with the army. Some said they were maps 
of Mexico. There were men with the army down 
there who had been graduated from the War College 
who knew more about the geography of Mexico than 
some who have lived all their lives in one place can 



PREPARING FOR POSSIBLE WARS 253 

tell of their own neighborhood. The men of the 
War College doubtless know more of Mexico than 
does any Mexican, for Mexico has no such highly 
developed institution. In a camp of instruction, 
such as that at Texas City purported to be, maps 
are the chief working tools of the strategists and 
form the text-books for practical maneuvers and 
tactics. So, of course, these would be taken. 

Maps, plans, drawings, photographs and written 
descriptions of foreign countries and their armies 
keep pouring into the War Department from all over 
the world. Had "Old Rough and Ready" had a 
knowledge of the geography of Mexico away back 
in 1845, or had the country had a war college at his 
back, he would not have spent a whole year down 
there before he got busy, nor would he have attacked 
Monterey with 6,000 men, glorious as this action 
was. 

General McClellan said during the Civil War 
that "such maps and plans as we have of the coun- 
try are absolutely worthless, because they are un- 
reliable. We are more often deceived by the data 
of our maps than we are by the enemy. Many 
of our best-laid plans go wrong because our maps 
are bad." In the Franco-Prussian war of 1871-72, 
the French minister of war had no maps of France 
prepared because he so confidently said that the 
war would not be fought in France, but in Germany. 

The Germans were well supplied with accurate 
maps of France. 



254 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

The British encountered many difficulties in the 
Boer war because they had no good maps of the 
country and therefore did not know the nature of 
the region in which they found themselves nor what 
to expect. 

Maps that come in from foreign sources through 
the War Department leave not a trace behind them 
in their official passage to the War College. There 
are no filing records in the War Department that 
tell where they came from or who sent in any 
information. The means of supply is a secret 
service and its work is confidential. 

In such public documents relating to the War 
College as are accessible, the pages are plentifully 
besprinkled with rows of asterisks, which show that 
there is much contained in the originals that it is 
neither safe, politic, nor desirable that the world at 
large should know. The very purpose of the insti- 
tution would be defeated if it were known. But 
day by day the accessions go on, to be used in study 
and to be safely stored for such emergencies as no 
man is wise enough to predict. Meantime, there is 
graduated every year a corps of field officers that in 
point of efficiency in all that goes to make a modern 
soldier has never been equaled in the history of the 
country. 

As to the ethics of gathering this information, the 
justification of the means employed is given in the 
same terms by every nation in the world — remember 
it is for war. The old days of knighthood, when 



PREPARING FOR POSSIBLE WARS 255 

armies withdrew to a level plain and fought it out 
on equal terms, have passed forever. The principle 
of modern warfare is to catch the other nation at as 
great disadvantage as you can, and have your own 
army as well prepared as possible. It is the busi- 
ness of the department of military information of 
every nation in the world to learn as much as 
may be about the military affairs of other natrons. 
They all do it, and do it in the same way as the 
War College is doing it. 



CHAPTER XX 

ASSIMILATING THE IMMIGRANT HORDE 

IN Europe there are hundreds of millions of 
people who dream the same fair fancy when- 
ever the burdens of their hard lives for a 
moment allow the springing in their breasts of 
eternal hope, and the dream is always of America. 
In Asia, where the nations are old and the peoples 
are of such a density as cannot readily be appreci- 
ated in a land of magnificent distances, the multi- 
tudes are awakening to the possibilities of life in the 
West. Unnumbered men and women who have 
never known the feel of a well-filled stomach, the 
touch of comfortable clothing, the thrill of political 
freedom, nurse as their heart's first desire the 
possibility of sometime landing in America and 
matching the capacity for work that is within 
them against the fabulous wages that are to be had, 
that wealth may come to them and theirs. 

Each year there are coming to the United States 
a million such people. Of these 750,000 are from 
East and South Europe — Italy, Russia, Finland, 
Austria, Greece, Turkey, Spain. But 150,000 now 
come each year from western Europe, from Ger- 
many, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Scandinavia 

256 



ASSIMILATING THE IMMIGRANTS 257 

— the countries that formerly furnished the raw 
material for the making of the nation of the West. 
Almost to a man these newcomers are people of toil 
whose passage money has resulted from a struggle 
so titanic as to be almost unbelievable. They are 
workers, intensely earnest, tragically anxious for 
opportunity. 

The United States has extended an easy welcome 
to these immigrants from Europe. Only to the 
awakening hordes of Asia has the United States, in 
alarm, put up the bars. Altogether, in the ninety- 
five years of immigration up to 1915, 32,000,000 
people have been admitted at the nation's ports. 
Of these the floods have come since the dawning 
of the present century. Those floods have devel- 
oped vast problems because they have poured, not 
fro;m the parent stock of western Europe, but from 
the Mediterranean. 

The American has been especially fortunate in the 
conditions under which the race of people of which 
he is a member came into being. When the nation 
was young it was the men of enterprise, courage, 
resourcefulness, who crossed the seas to make them- 
selves new homes. This was not a task for drones 
nor weaklings. Thus was a natural process of 
selection set up and it came to pass that the parent 
stock of the young race was made up of the hardy 
spirits of the nations of western Europe. These 
were the pioneer races and the venturesome spirits 
were selected from them. It was to be expected 



258 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

that a very superior people would spring from such 
an ancestry. 

But when the United States grew great and strong 
and prosperous, her attractions appealed to a 
different class of immigration. There was no longer 
the demand for the spirit of the pioneer. Those 
who were oppressed by poverty and lack of oppor- 
tunity, who looked abroad for a chance of prosperity, 
became the immigrant class. And the nation was 
new, there was an abundance of room, there was work 
untold to be accomplished. So the bars remained 
down to almost whoever wanted to come. The 
hordes of the oppressed, the stinted, the starved, 
have been pouring in. Great ships disgorge 5,000 
and 10,000 of them a day at Ellis Island. They 
are a tortured mass that seethe like cattle through 
the chutes to be examined by the inspectors. 

There are a few comparatively easy conditions 
that they must meet. There must be no contagious 
disease, there must be a comparative degree of 
physical fitness, there must be no glaring mental 
or moral defect that may be recognized. If any of 
these is found the applicant is returned to Europe. 
The steamship companies are required to take back 
such passengers free of charge. It is but a slight 
penalty and therefore does not cause the ship owners 
to exert much care as to the fitness of the passengers 
they receive. Of the million a year who apply, 
some 20,000 are returned to the point of embarka- 
tion. Each of these returns is a personal tragedy, 



ASSIMILATING THE IMMIGRANTS 259 

for a whole family has slaved and starved for years 
to give this individual his opportunity. But where 
one is turned back fifty are admitted. This country 
could save the 20,000 tragedies a year by having 
the inspection at the point of embarkation but 
there are small, obvious matters of this sort that a 
great nation fails to do. Likewise, if the inspection 
were made before the immigrant has spent his money, 
the service would have the heart to make the 
requirements and their enforcement more rigid. 

The government of the United States does not 
regard the larger phases of the immigration question 
in its administration of the service. Government- 
ally the problem is merely whether an applicant 
will be self-supporting and not become a charge 
upon the community. The regulations are drafted 
with this idea as a basis. That great question of the 
effect of immigration upon the nature of the race 
of the future is given little consideration. 

The western European was the foundation stock 
in America. With the peoples of the Mediterranean 
adding half a million prolific individuals to the 
population each year, there is bound to come a 
change in the whole people. If present conditions 
continue one-half of the blood of the typical Ameri- 
can of the coming century will be Slavic. That 
individual will be a different man from the American 
of to-day. Whether he will be an inferior individual 
is a question to which the United States is paying no 
attention. 



260 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

This admission of the poor of European nations is 
one of the most magnificent charities the world has 
ever known when considered from the standpoint 
of the people admitted. It makes it possible that 
the conditions of all these people and many depend- 
ing upon them should be inestimably bettered. It 
brings vast happiness into the world that would not 
otherwise have existed. 

The task of receiving and assimilating these 
masses is one of the greatest of Uncle Sam's modern 
miracles. But there is the question of the advis- 
ability, from the standpoint of this nation, of being 
so liberal in this respect. The peculiar conditions 
under which the United States finds itself of being 
the land of promise to all the world, offers such an 
opportunity of race building as has never before 
presented itself. The average immigrant from the 
Mediterranean who reaches American shores to-day 
is the best of his kind. Only the Italian peasant of 
vision^ industry, determination, could have over- 
come the difficulties that lay between him and 
America. The choicest spirits in all the communi- 
ties find a way to get to America. These are to 
become the parents of the generations of the future. 
But the federal government has the power to 
make the requirements for that parentage still more 
exacting. If only the men and women particularly 
fitted when viewed from the standpoint of the race 
of the future were admitted, that process of selection 
which is said by scientists to be the surest method of 



ASSIMILATING THE IMMIGRANTS 261 

developing excellence in coming generations might 
be rigidly applied to the men of all lands who are 
allowed to become Americans. So might be devel- 
oped a race of such quality as the world has never 
known before. This fitness might well be made the 
standard by which the immigrant is measured. 

As a method of preventing the coming of too many 
immigrants, the educational qualification as a bar 
to admission has, of late, been strongly advocated. 
It is currently favored by politicians, labor leaders, 
members of Congress. It would reduce the number 
of people who are let in by 30 per cent. Yet the edu- 
cational qualification would be no correct measure 
as to the fitness of an immigrant to add his blood to 
that of the American of the future. Some dwarfish 
little Slav with his heart full of anarchy might be 
able to read while the hulking giant from the hills 
of Norway might not. So would the educational 
qualification fail to accomplish the most important 
of desirable ends. 

But practically all of these immigrants use the 
opportunities of the New World to the utmost and 
make of themselves most successful and productive 
citizens. It is but necessary to trace a few of them 
to determine the result of their coming, the good to 
them and to the United States. 

Just outside of Boston there is a group of a dozen 
Hungarian farmers. Not long ago the house of one 
of these burned down. Money lenders wanted 8 
per cent, interest on a loan sufficient to rebuild the 



262 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

house. One of the Hungarian farmers who had been 
upon this land but six years immediately appeared 
and loaned his fellow-countryman $1,500 at 4 per 
cent, interest. 

Throughout New England the abandoned farms 
of yesterday are becoming the gardens of to-day 
through the labors of these foreigners. Strangely, 
90 per cent, of these farmers are Polanders. Some 
years back it happened that many individual Polan- 
ders began small farming in New England. They 
demonstrated to their fellow-countrymen the profits 
that were to be made from these farms. If the pres- 
ent tendency continues it is estimated that in twenty 
years more the Poles will own the great majority 
of the farm lands of New England. 

At Vineland, New Jersey, there is a settlement 
of Sicilians which numbers 6,000. The real estate 
holdings of these Sicilians are worth $4,000,000. 
One family in a single year established a record by 
producing $9,000 worth of sweet potatoes. Pros- 
perity reigns throughout the community, and with 
prosperity among the immigrants there is always 
happiness. 

Tontitown, Arkansas, was founded a decade and 
a half ago and its small farms of twenty and forty 
acres were sold to Venetians at $15 an acre. Those 
farms are now yielding crops that are worth $100 
an acre each year to their owners. Grapes and other 
fruits are making these transplanted Europeans 
wealthy. 



ASSIMILATING THE IMMIGRANTS 263 

These are but the tales of little groups of immi- 
grants who have found their feet planted in the soil 
and have gained the proverbial strength which 
comes from the touch of mother earth. 

Twenty-two years ago a representative of the 
federal Bureau of Immigration visited the home of 
a certain Hungarian in Scranton, Pennsylvania. 
There he found the man and his family living in a 
mere hovel and amid the greatest of squalor. 
Recently he returned to Scranton and visited this 
same home site, which he found still occupied by the 
same man. As prosperity had come to this immi- 
grant he had added to and improved his residence 
until it was now the home of a well-to-do family and 
thoroughly American in every respect. He asked 
for the two children who had been youngsters rolling 
on the floor and crudely dressed in gunny-sacks upon 
his previous visit. The daughter of the family is 
now teaching music in one of the public schools of 
Scranton. The son is a steam engineer in the mines. 
The father is in business and prosperous and inde- 
pendent. So is an example shown of the manner in 
which the family of a very poor laborer about a mine 
will advance and work itself out to eminent accept- 
ability from the American standpoint. 

The Hungarians, Austrians, and South Germans 
are to be found in America wherever there is coal 
mining. There were coal mines in the regions from 
which they came and they know something of that 
business. They are not miners, however, and must 



264 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

begin as mere laborers and acquire proficiency and 
in the end emancipation. For these Hungarians 
and Austrians are by nature and instinct farmers. 
They have not been coming to America for a great 
many years, but already they are finding themselves 
and learning how to work their way back to the soil 
from which they came. As they follow mining 
farther west they are brought more directly in 
touch with farmers, and it is found in Illinois and 
Iowa that one after another of these miners is leav- 
ing the work underground and acquiring small 
tracts of farm land where he and his family immedi- 
ately develop an enviable independence. 

Most of the immigrants land in New York. 
These humble people have always been accustomed 
to walk from place to place, from village to village, 
in their native countries. The newly landed im- 
migrant starts out on foot soon after landing. He 
walks to the waterfront in one direction and then 
in another. He finds water on all sides, and is 
always turned back upon himself. He is really 
frightened in this strange land and quite naturally 
hides himself among his own people in whatever 
section of New York settlements from his native 
land are to be found. But all the time he is longing 
for the open country and a little home of his own. 

One year there were 250,000 people among those 
who came to the United States who could neither 
read nor write. Another year there were about 
200,000. This means that 30 per cent, of all those 



ASSIMILATING THE IMMIGRANTS 265 

who come are illiterate. They are but children, 
desperately in earnest, intensely serious. No coun- 
try boy thrust into the melee of city streets was ever 
so ill at ease as they. The country boy is in his 
native land, is less ignorant, talks the language of 
the people about him. 

Over three-fifths of all the immigrants coming to 
the United States remain in the five eastern states 
contiguous to the port of entrance at New York. 
These immigrants differ widely from the earlier 
ones in respect to their occupations and the locality 
to which they go. Contrary to what was formerly 
the case, a large proportion are unskilled laborers 
and go to the manufacturing and mining centers, 
where the immigration commission recently found 
that there was an oversupply of unskilled labor. 
They often herd together, forming in effect foreign 
colonies, in which the English language is almost 
unknown. Miserable economic and sanitary con- 
ditions exist in many of these colonies, as witness, 
for instance, in New York City the frequency with 
which the state factory inspectors are compelled 
to attach the red " unclean" tag to articles made in 
shops and factories where aliens are employed. 

But the immigrant does not go to the congested 
city as a matter of preference. He is taken there 
in the first place because it is the part of America 
of which he has heard most, and in the second place 
because his animal instinct drives him to the homes 
of his kind. His first great obstacle is to learn 



%m UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

something of the language of the people among 
whom he is thrown. Here among his fellows he 
begins this task. Temporarily he may accept what- 
ever employment presents itself, whether it be 
peddling bananas, strike breaking, or common 
labor on some construction work. He may find a 
steady job for years. If so, he never sees beyond it 
into the opportunities of America, and when he has 
acquired sufficient money he will return to Europe 
and buy himself a one-acre farm. But all the 
time he is looking for that opportunity to get him- 
self a start in the small business he knows, or upon 
a small piece of land, which is his first love. This 
government might profit much more greatly through 
the coming of the immigrant if it would watch him 
a little further and guide his course to some of its 
unoccupied land. 

It is interesting to note that certain races in Amer- 
ica follow certain avocations. There is the Greek, 
for instance, who shines all the shoes on this side 
of the ocean. The Greek got started in the business 
of shoe shining in a queer way. He was so situated 
as to offer himself advantageously to the purpose of 
certain Americans who organized a shoe-shine trust. 
The Greeks who come to America are mostly from 
the cities, being in this way different from the Ital- 
ians, who originate mostly in the small towns and 
the country. The Italian wants to be independent, 
wants to get started for himself. This is because 
he has worked for himself in the country. But the 



ASSIMILATING THE IMMIGRANTS 267 

Greek is willing to accept almost any employment 
on almost any terms. He does not know how to 
farm, nor how to mine. Therefore, he is found 
doing the plainest and most unskilled labor and for 
the lowest wages. The Greek boys could be em- 
ployed cheapest and with most likelihood of per- 
manency by the shoe-shining trust. They were 
thus started in a given industry and guided the 
courses of their fellows who followed. Likewise are 
the Greeks most likely to be found doing such labor 
as railroad building and other unskilled construc- 
tion work. 

When the figures show that 125,000 Hungarians 
arrived in the United States, it may safely be esti- 
mated that 100,000 of these found their way into 
the mines of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and the 
other coal-producing states. The same thing is true 
in almost as large a proportion among the Aus- 
trians that come to America. The Italians do all 
manner of ordinary work through the first years 
after their arrival, but they cannot be turned aside 
from the idea of a little business or a little farm of 
their own when they have saved enough. The 200,- 
000 Russians who last year arrived have even a 
stronger tendency to get on American farms, for 
they are peasant farming people before they come. 

So of the Poles who came to America last year 
it is interesting to note that 4,000 went into Con- 
necticut, 6,000 into Massachusetts, 10,000 into 
Illinois and 16,000 into the State of New York, 



268 UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES 

and it is known that most of these immigrants found 
a footing on the farm. 

More actors and clergymen were English than of 
any other race admitted; more lawyers were Cuban; 
more musicians were German and Italian; more 
bankers were Hebrews, as were blacksmiths and 
book-binders. The Irish led in their contribution 
of masons and iron- workers and contributed a large 
share of teachers. So may the gamut be run in- 
definitely. 



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